


Between the Pages

by BoneyardGracie



Series: Between the Pages [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Mahariel/Zevran, Fluff, M/M, Violence in Later Chapters, autistic!Hawke, bookshop au, dyslexic!Fenris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 79,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6601393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoneyardGracie/pseuds/BoneyardGracie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke leads a quiet life. He has his friends, his 60 kilo lap dog and a job that he loves. It’s predictable and he likes it that way. When Fenris comes storming into the bookshop where Hawke works, he brings with him a catalyst for change.</p><p>Here is someone, Hawke discovers, who accepts him for whom he is and doesn’t demand or expect change. He can’t ignore that, especially not when he falls so very hard for Fenris.</p><p>Fenris carries a secret with him, however, and one that shows up all too soon with no reservations about taking down anything and anyone in his path. In a bid to help him, Hawke finds himself going back to parts of his life that he thought he had put behind and putting himself at great risk in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was a set order to the art of waking up. It started with the alarm clock screeching that it was 6 o’clock, soon joined by a pitiful groan, before an arm rose from the mess of blankets and blindly groped about on the bedside table for the infernal mechanism that dared disturb the quiet. Long fingers enclosed the clock, finding the button and the bedroom returned, once again, to silence.

For a few moments.

Claws tapped on the wooden floor. The mattress dipped under the weight of a massive head, and stale, warm dog breath wafted over Tybalt’s face.

“Nooooo,” Tybalt whined, pulling his blankets over his head.

Yarrow sat back for a second, whining his disagreement.

“Dun caaaaare.”

Yarrow huffed.

“’Snot morning yet,” Tybalt insisted. “Still night. Dark outside.” He pulled the blanket a little higher. Mornings were evil things, best left to the rare and elusive morning person. He was a good person. He didn’t deserve this kind of torture, damn it. His eyes drifted shut again and the alarm’s screeching faded from memory.

The mattress dipped again. Tybalt’s eyes snapped open.

“Yarrow! N-AUGH!” Gasping, he struggled to push nearly sixty kilos of dog off of him. “Yarrow! Yarrow, down! No, I don’t- Great, yes, now I need a bath.”

The dog barked in agreement and added another slobbery lick to Tybalt’s face before hopping back down to the floor and happily traipsing off to the kitchen.

Groaning, Tybalt slowly levered himself into a sitting position. He raked a hand through his hair, wincing as his fingers snagged on the tangles in his hair. Ugh. Mornings. Why? Just… why? He stifled a yawn and swung his legs over the edge of his bed. Okay, up and at em or whatever did the trick today.

Yarrow barked from the kitchen. It was always the kitchen. Big bottomless pit of a dog.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he grumbled, grabbing his string of red beads and wrapping it around his wrist before hoisting himself up. Limbs still awkward and unsteady, he stumbled through the apartment into the kitchen. Tybalt squinted against the light and levelled a half-hearted glare at Yarrow, whose tail thumped rapidly on the floor.

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

Yarrow’s tongue lolled out of his maw.

One day, he’d have a dog that understood the true evil of getting up at the crack of dawn. Clearly, this was not that day. This was the day where Yarrow insisted that it was 6 in the morning and that, like any other day, 6 o’clock meant food time. No excuses, no dawdling, the only acceptable option was a load of fresh kibble in his bowl. Yarrow closely circled around Tybalt as he tried to cross the kitchen for the jar of kibble.

“One of these days I’m going to trip over you and break my neck and then what would you do?” he asked, only to get shoved in the back by the helpful pooch. “You have been picking up far too many bad manners from Anders’s cats.”

Dogs were not supposed to be this bossy. He’d seen the films. He’d read the books. Dogs were not bossy. Cats were. Obviously, Yarrow was defective. What else was new?

Finally, through no small miracle, Tybalt managed to put the bowl down on the floor. Yarrow stuffed his face immediately into his food.

He rubbed a hand over his face, for barely half a second before he yanked his hand down and ran his fingers over the beads instead. Stubble. He needed to shave. Yes. Good plan. He lurched back into movement. Shaving, shower, breakfast. Right. On it.

It wasn’t that difficult once he got moving. It was just that his bed was so warm and soft and tempting when he had to keep moving that made it hard. He could practically hear a little devil on his shoulder whispering that another fifteen minutes wouldn’t be that bad.

No.

No, he would not listen to that. He would not give into temptation. Think responsible! Think adul- no, not that kind of adult.

Besides, he reasoned as he stumbled into the bedroom and squinted at his bleary-eyed reflection, he needed to get up anyway and water his plants. Might as well do the whole thing and go to work while he was at it.

By the time he stumbled into the hall, half hopping while tugging on his left shoe, Yarrow had found his spot right next to the therapy dog vest, leash dangling from his maw and tail rhythmically thumping on the floor. Tybalt snagged the vest from its hook and put it in his bag before snapping the leash onto Yarrow’s collar.

“Ready, big guy?”

Yarrow barked, short and quiet, bouncing from left to right.

Tybalt smiled, raking his fingers through the dog’s fur. “Good boy, off we go.”

* * *

The air was still night cold on their way to work, Yarrow happily keeping pace with Hawke’s jog. Other than a few morning birds and some other unfortunate souls doomed to leave for work on this unholy hour, silence stretched across the streets. A few more bleary eyed, dog owners stumbled around in the park in varying states of sleep-zombie-ism.

Tybalt paused, keeping half an eye on Yarrows bouncing around while fishing his phone out of his pocket and aimed the camera at the sky. Exactly the right shades of golden light filtering through the low on the horizon clouds and the faint wisps of pink and orange against the sky. He pulled up Merrill’s contact and sent it her way; she’d like it. Now where was Yarrow?

Ah, right there, being chased around the park by a puppy that was all paws and enthusiasm. Someone’s laugh cut through the morning silence, startling Tybalt. Pinpointing the source, he spotted a short woman holding hands with a slightly taller blonde; her eyes were on the puppy chasing Yarrow.

Should he approach them? Just say hello, comment on the puppy. Could he do that or would he just be the ‘creepy guy at the dog park’? Bethany’s voice lingered in the back of his mind, promising that making friends wasn’t that hard, maybe he could just try and expand his circle a little further.

He moved, one step, and then froze. Too many options, too many things to say and too many ways he’d screwed up in the past. What if he tried to say something witty and the words came out all wrong again? Then they’d look at him, all blank faced and shame would come rolling in like a familiar, smothering blanket.

Not today.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe.

His fingers found the beads wrapped around his wrist and began to twist, pushing them together with wooden clacks, fingers smoothing over the surface.

Something bumped into his leg with a low whine. Tybalt looked down to find Yarrow staring up at him. The dog barked, once and softly, tail giving an experimental wag. Tybalt smiled down at him. 

“It’s fine, big guy,” he said, though the tightness in his throat called him a liar.

If only there was a manual for befriending strangers.

His phone erupted in bird sounds in his pocket. With one hand carding through Yarrow’s fur, he opened Merrill’s emoticon littered message. Stuffing his phone back, he clipped the leash back onto Yarrow’s collar and fished the therapy dog jacket out of his bag. Yarrow held perfectly still as Tybalt put it on him. He smiled, scratching Yarrow behind the ears one more time.

“Let’s go.”

Work, he decided, was a perfectly valid excuse to back out of practicing his social skills. Besides, he was plenty social at work. He talked more than his boss! Granted, that just meant that he had to speak in sentences longer than five words and use multiple sentences, but at least there were non-autistic people who disliked talking with strangers more than he did.

* * *

The city woke further the closer Tybalt got to the book store. The more people milled around in their carefully organized chaos, the closer Yarrow pressed against Tybalt’s leg. The dog’s bulk was a comforting presence, calming in its weight and strength. People always allowed for more space around Tybalt when Yarrow was with him. The therapy dog vest didn’t factor into the fact that Yarrow looked like he could happily tackle a bear and come out on top.

The leash became less of a way to show that Yarrow was well under control and more of an anchor in the sea of noise and colours. The feeling of the leather grip in his hand a reminder that he was there, just like the wooden beads clacking together cut through people talking and cars speeding by.

He turned left, almost running into a walking bucket of chrysanthemums.

“Eep!” the bucket squeaked. With Merrill's voice.

Right.

“Sorry! Sorry! Are you alright? Did I get anything on- oh! Hello Hawke.”

“Are you okay? Do you need help?” He already reached to take the bucket from her. The combined weight of water and flowers had him strain for a moment to keep a good grip on it.

“Oh! Yes please. It’s a bit heavy, isn’t it? Could you put it down next to the daisies? Thank you! That picture you sent was lovely, by the way.” Merrill hovered around him, just shy of his personal space, her voice like bright little bubbles on the water.

Tybalt straightened, smiling at her, but his gaze going right over her shoulder to the bookstore next to her flower shop. The door was still closed, the lights off.

“Isn’t Mahariel in yet?”

“What?” Merrill crouched down in front of Yarrow, ruffling the big dog’s fur and getting slobbery affection in return. “Oh, no, haven’t seen him yet.”

Tybalt fiddled with the keys he had. He could open the shop and let himself in but that was Mahariel’s job. Mahariel owned the store. He was always there before Tybalt. Well, almost, there had been the time he’d been down with a bad flu. What if he was ill now? What if he needed a doctor and they were just standing around and-

“Oh! Wait! He did say something about Zevran flying in,” Merrill helpfully supplied.

Or that.

“I’m sure he’ll be in any minute though. You can wait here if you want.”

Tybalt bit his lip, flipping the keys in his hand. He wanted to say yes. He could say yes. He shouldn’t. He’d received this key for a reason. Mahariel had entrusted him with it. He couldn’t just not open the store because he wasn’t familiar with it. He shook his head. 

“It’s fine.”

It was fine. It would be fine. He was a responsible adult. What was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like he could play dominos with the bookshelves. Okay, well, technically he could but even he, for all his height and strength, would either have to put in some effort or summon his inner Evy Carnahan. Despite Anders’s conviction that he could injure himself in a ball pit, he wasn’t quite that bad, thank you very much.

Squaring his shoulders, he looked at the store.

Merrill giggled at his side. “You’re kind of looking at it like it’s a dragon.”

“I’d take the dragon, actually.” Dragons were awesome. Breathing fire, the epitome of predators and happily fictional. At least with those, you knew where they were coming from.

The lock clicked open to the empty, dark store. He stepped inside, pausing for a moment and half expecting the place to come crashing down around his ears. Everything remained perfectly quiet and solid. Yarrow head-butted him from behind, herding him further into the store.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Tybalt objected. Peals of Merrill’s laughter followed them in. Yarrow was only appeased once his bowls of kibble and water behind the counter were filled. He dropped down with a thud and a contented huff, stretching his massive bulk out on the blanket Mahariel had provided them with.

Falling into the regular flow of opening up was easy, after the first hurdle. He’d done everything before. The lights, the cash register and the blind. By the time he was switching out the books on display, the bell of the door jangled, followed by the step-shuffle and a pair of lighter, almost inaudible footsteps.

“Ah, but mi amor, where is your sense of adventure?” Zevran’s voice dipped and dragged, painting his words with the air of a lazy summer evening.

“How about your sense of direction?” Mahariel’s voice echoed with dark, quiet forests, peaceful but with an undercurrent of danger.

“You wound me! Cut me to the quick.”

Tybalt looked up to see Zevran stagger back, hand pressed to his chest with a flair for dramatic that made a smile twitch on Mahariel’s face. Mahariel stepped closer to Zevran, murmuring something that Tybalt couldn’t catch, but brought a flash of softness to Zevran’s face. Fingers tangled together and a brief peck of a kiss, before Zevran turned heel and darted out.

Mahariel turned and Tybalt ducked his head, feeling as if he’d just been caught spying. Tybalt felt a faint sense of want for someone to share something like that with him, easy jokes and laughter and touches without feeling as if his skin was trying to crawl away from the other.

Maybe some day.

“He said he knew a shortcut,” Mahariel said, leaning on his cane as he turned one last, fond glance in the direction Zevran had taken off in. “He didn’t.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tybalt’s fingers drummed on the wooden counter, eyes sharp on the customer browsing through the books. He should probably go and offer his assistance. That was what he was for, after all. It was literally in the job description. He’d been practicing too. Sort of. Or he should at least get the lady to stop pulling every book from the shelf and then only pushing it halfway back in when she decided it wasn’t worth her time.

She was turning the entire shelf into chaos!

Some of them didn’t even stand up straight anymore. He could _see_ them poking out at an angle.

This was not proper book shop behaviour!

Oh god- did she- was she- She had! That book was not supposed to go there! At all!

He looked around, trying to locate Mahariel only to find that his boss was nowhere in sight and, thus, no help whatsoever. Great. Fantastic. He couldn’t even call Yarrow into action because getting his dog to herd customers out of the store was apparently frowned upon both by said customers, Mahariel and, on one memorable occasion, Aveline.

How was he supposed to have known that the guy would call the police about a hostile dog? The most hostile Yarrow ever got was- actually, he couldn’t think of it. There had been times when mice had attempted to steal his biscuits and all the giant lug had down was stare wistfully at the rodent and huff a deep, sad sigh.

Okay.

Fine then.

He could do this. He could come to the rescue of books and sensible order. Time to do his duty. He took one, deep breath, squared his shoulders and tried to banish all possible worst case scenarios from his head — this was a customer, not a serial killer or a criminal on the run from law enforcement or, even worse, one of those people who thought that the customer always being right applied to everything. Including their abysmal behaviour.

“Excuse me, ma’am, can I help you with anything?” he asked. His fingers fiddled with the beads wrapped around his wrist.

The woman didn’t look up right away. Tybalt shifted his weight from left to right. Should he repeat himself? Scrape his throat? Which one was more polite? “Ma’am?” he tried again, a little louder this time.

That got her attention. She snapped the book she’d been leafing through shut.

“Well,” she said, looking up at him like she was calculating just how many sheets of parchment she could get out of his skin.

This had been a mistake. He should never have left the counter. His mouth went dry. His fingers twisted the string of beads tight enough that they pressed round indents into his wrist.

“I don’t suppose that you have anything about growing herbs, do you?”

Tybalt released his desperate hold on his bracelet. 

“We do! We just got some books in by Ines. She’s a great botanist. Really knows her stuff too. I know people recommend Adan’s Introduction, but he focuses way more on actually using herbs rather than growing them. I have Ines’s _Comprehensive Guide to Basic Botany_ myself. It’s almost falling apart because I use it so much-”

Whatever the woman had been expecting, it probably wasn’t the fifteen minute lecture that followed on just why Ines was clearly the best author on the subject for someone who was mainly interested in growing plants rather than using them. Getting to talk about plants was almost enough to make Tybalt forget about the chaos the lady had wreaked on his painstakingly ordered shelves. Almost, but not quite.

The woman ended up buying both the books by Ines and Adan before she left. A little sigh of relief escaped him. Good. The books were safe again. No more chaos and haphazard re-shelving without even the slightest respect to such small things like alphabet. Or lining everything up just so you get one smooth line of glorious, uncracked book spines.

Rain began to pelt at the windows. Softly at first, barely noticeable but slowly increasing in volume as if a beast with a thousand claws was trying to throw itself into the store. Tybalt leaned out from behind the bookshelf and couldn’t help a smile. At least he got to work inside, where it was nice and dry and-

The door flew open, followed by the sound of rain pouring down on the pavement and footsteps almost as light as Zevran’s before the door slammed shut. Yarrow let out a whine in the back room, disturbed from his afternoon nap no doubt by the noise. Big canine baby.

Tybalt stooped down, peering through the opening in the bookshelf. A man stood right in front of the door, dripping wet. His clothes were soaked, white hair stuck to his face. For a second, Tybalt thought that the man was old, but his stance was wrong and Tybalt saw no signs of age on his face. Just odd white lines on his chin.

The man’s head snapped left, sharp green eyes piercing at him.

Tybalt staggered back, hitting the bookcase behind him. He straightened, only to hit his head on one of the higher shelves, and yelped.

“Who’s there?” the man demanded.

Voices, Tybalt bemoaned quietly to himself, should not be that hot and that scowly at the same time.

“It’s just me!” Tybalt scrambled out from behind the cases before realizing that the guy would have no idea who ‘me’ was. Great. Wonderful. “That is… uhm… I’m Hawke. Tybalt Hawke. I… uh… I work here?”

Why was he asking a potential customer whether he, Tybalt, worked there? His paychecks proved that he worked there. He knew- Wait. Stop. Deep breath in. He burrowed his fingers in Yarrow’s fur in reflex, not even having noticed that the dog had come to perform his therapeutic duties.

He heard the drag and tap of Mahariel’s feet and cane behind him. The stranger’s green eyes darted from Tybalt to somewhere behind Hawke.

“Everything under control?” Mahariel asked.

Tybalt nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s fine. I just stumbled, is all.”

“Very well.” For a moment, the store was quiet save for the rain hitting the window and then the click and step indicated Mahariel retreating back to his office.

Tybalt shifted, biting his bottom lip. “Can I hel-”

“-I should leave,” the man said at the same time.

“No!” Tybalt froze. Oh crap, had he said that out loud? From the way the other was staring at him, he would have to go with yes. Yes. Socially awkward Tybalt struck again. Amazing. “I mean- ah- I mean-” come on think of something say something anything except the handsome thing or the hot voice thing “-it’s still raining outside? And… uh… and if you came in here to shelter from the rain that’s okay. We have chairs. And tea! And books you can read and-” Stop talking. Stop talking now. He twitched his wrist, feeling the beads move just enough to pull him a little out of his head.

The stranger looked back outside, where the rain didn’t show even the slightest inclination of letting up. 

“If it is of no bother to you,” he said.

Victory! He hadn’t scared the guy off! Amazing. Would miracles never cease?

“No bother at all,” Tybalt promised.

Yarrow lumbered forward, pressing his nose against the man’s hand.

“Yarrow! No, come back here.”

“It is fine.” The guy’s eyes settled on Yarrow’s jacket even as he scratched the dog behind the ears.

Tybalt braced himself for the question that was sure to follow. People always asked. They wanted to know why. Had he been in a war or something? They never seemed satisfied with ‘I’m autistic; I get anxiety attacks when I’m overwhelmed, and Yarrow helps me with them’.

“You named your dog Yarrow?”

That… he hadn’t expected that question.

“Yes. I just… I like herbs and yarrow’s medicinal. It helps people. Yarrow helps me.” Tybalt gave a little shrug.

Whatever he’d said, it drew a twitch of a smile. 

“I apologize. I must come across as rude. My name is Fenris.”

Fenris. Tybalt echoed the name in his head. Fenris who didn’t start asking questions about Yarrow’s purpose, who didn’t look at Tybalt as if Tybalt was an alien even in the face of his awkwardness. 

“There’s a sitting corner over there. You can go and make yourself comfortable. I’ll go get tea. Do you want sugar or cream in it? We have those fruit flavoured ones too.” Not that Tybalt knew why. Mahariel always frowned at them as if their existence insulted him personally and Tybalt never touched them.

Come to think of it, maybe he should see if they were still good. How long had they been in there anyway?

“Regular tea will be fine.”

Tybalt could still see a hint of Fenris’s faint smile playing on his lips.

Fenris had claimed one of the bean bags as his own by the time Tybalt returned with the tea. Fenris had hung his jacket over the radiator and Yarrow, in turn, had put his massive head in Fenris’s lap. The dog already looked big next to Tybalt, who at 6’4” was no small man, but Fenris was dwarfed by Yarrow.

Well, if Yarrow had taken to the man so thoroughly, Tybalt supposed he couldn’t be bad news.

Unless Yarrow was just won over by superior ear scritching. That was also a possibility.

The rain still hadn’t let up either.

“Tea’s ready,” Tybalt announced, holding the big blue mugs up for Fenris to see. Little wisps of steam curled up above the edge. He handed one of them over to Fenris and just as his long fingers curled around the mug Tybalt caught a glimpse of raised lines under the white marks. Scars? A question burned on his lips, but he clamped down on it. “And I found a towel. I thought maybe you could use it? You’re kinda, well, soaked.”

Not that Tybalt particularly minded the whole wet strands and droplets of water sliding down tan skin. In fact, he could very happily spend the rest of the afternoon memorizing the sight.

Fenris scraped his throat, jolting Tybalt back to reality. Tearing his gaze away from Fenris, Tybalt felt almost instant heat flashing up his cheeks. Crap crap crap. Had he been staring? Had Fenris caught him staring?

Crap.

“The towel, please?” Fenris asked.

Oh. Right.

That.

Tybalt jabbed out his arm with the towel still draped over it.

“I should probably… uhm… yeah. I should get back to work,” he said, words jumbling together, stalling and stuttering in his throat and unable to look away from Fenris rubbing his hair dry. Tybalt swallowed and forced himself to look away. Oh look. His shoes. Since when had that scuff mark been-

“What about your tea?” Fenris asked, his voice drawing Tybalt’s eyes back up. Tybalt felt his heart give a little jolt at Fenris sitting there with the towel still half covering his head, the visible white hair standing up at odd angles with little curls at the tips.

He looked almost fluffy.

Tybalt’s fingers itched to card through the man’s hair. He looked down at his own mug of tea instead.

“Yes. Right. I… uhm… I have tea. I should drink that.”

“If you don’t wish to join me, you don’t have to.”

“No, I do! I mean- Oh hell.” Tybalt dropped down, as carefully as he could manage, in one of the chairs. The beanbags looked very comfortable but he knew from personal experience that he just couldn’t get out of them in any remotely dignified way. “I’m not really good at the whole people thing.” He gave a vague, fluttering gesture between the two of them.

Fenris’s eyes wrinkled at the corner. A little lift of a smile teased at the corner of his lips. 

“I had noticed. However, if I wouldn’t keep you from your job, I would enjoy your company.”

Tybalt echoed Fenris’s smile, teeth briefly digging into his bottom lip before nodding. “I’d like that.”

They sat there, drinking tea with Yarrow occasionally lumbering from one to the other to get petted and scratched behind the ears and Tybalt having to get up and help a customer once or twice, but always wandering back to Fenris. The rain hadn’t let up even by their second mug of tea, but at least Fenris had dried up considerably and Tybalt was pleased to note that Fenris’s hair, when dry, gave even better fluff.

“I should get going,” Fenris said, putting his now empty mug onto the windowsill. He sounded about as excited, Tybalt noted, as someone about to get a flu shot.

“Are you sure?” Tybalt blurted. “It’s still raining!” Don’t go, please don’t go, please.

Sadly lacking in any telepathic abilities, Tybalt failed to broadcast his message and Fenris got up. 

“Sadly, yes. Though you have my thanks for your company, and the tea.” He grabbed his still damp coat from the radiator. “It was nice meeting you, Hawke.”

Tybalt smiled, stuffing his hands in his pockets and bouncing from his heels onto his toes. 

“I really liked meeting you too,” he said, walking Fenris to the store exit. “Isn’t there anyone you can ask a ride from? It’s still pouring outside.”

The faint smile on Fenris’s face dimmed. “Not at present.”

“Take my umbrella,” Mahariel’s voice cut quietly through the air, startling Tybalt. He hadn’t come out of the office the entire afternoon, but from the way he was gripping his cane and leaning on it, Tybalt had a good idea as to why.

Fenris blinked, face blank. 

“I would not want to inconvenience you.”

“I won’t be walking home,” Mahariel answered, shaking his head. “So I have no need for it today.”

“If you’re certain.” Fenris hesitated, eyeing the black umbrella Mahariel held out.

“I insist.”

Fenris left the store with Mahariel’s umbrella to keep him at least a little dry.

Tybalt picked his way back to the counter, slumping over it with a dramatic sigh. 

“If being Awkward were an Olympic Sport,” he bemoaned, “I would have all the medals.”

“You’re not that bad.” Mahariel came over, slowly, balancing his gait to favour his right leg.

“I’m worse,” Tybalt insisted.

The doorbell jingled and Tybalt’s head snapped up. Fenris? No. Merrill. Not that he didn’t like seeing his friend, but, well, he had been kind of hoping that Fenris had decided outside that it would be better to wait the rain out. Tybalt’s head thudded against the counter again. 

“All the medals.”

“Ooh, what kind of medals? Are you competing in anything?” Merrill asked, skipping over.

“Only if there’s a contest in being overly dramatic.” Mahariel smiled indulgently at Tybalt’s.

Merrill patted Tybalt’s shoulder. 

“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

Tybalt turned his head, pressing his chin on the flat surface. 

“There was a guy. I liked him.”

“That’s good!” Merrill cheered. “Did you get his number?”

Crap.

“No,” Tybalt moaned.

“He’ll be back,” Mahariel said, dragging a chair out for him to perch on with his right leg stretched as straight out as he could manage.

“How do you know that?” As far as Tybalt knew, Mahariel had no clairvoyance thing going on.

Mahariel smiled, wide and knowing and far, far too serene for Tybalt’s liking. 

“He’ll have to return my umbrella, won’t he?”

It really said a lot about his life when his boss was better at setting him up than Tybalt himself was. He was tempted to forgive Mahariel, though, since it meant that Fenris would have to come back or be doomed forever as an umbrella thief, truly a heinous reputation not even the most weathered criminal would want on their record. On the other hand, that meant that Fenris would come back, see Tybalt again and have a new chance at deciding that Tybalt was too much of a mess.

He really needed to stop thinking about that.

“Shouldn’t you be in your store?” he asked Merrill, desperately grabbing for a change of topic before his headweasels went even further down that rabbit hole.

Merrill shrugged. 

“The toilet flooded,” she cheerfully informed them.


	3. Chapter 3

Fenris did not come back to return the umbrella that day, sad but understandable. The rain had luckily let up near the end of the day, at least enough that Tybalt could venture home without wondering if he should just abandon all pretence and swim instead.

He stumbled -- holding the door open for Yarrow, complete with little ball of orange fluff with a tail sitting on his back, to follow in before staggering towards his bedroom. He was done with jeans and respectable clothes. The rest of the day would be sweatpants and a hoodie that was older than his secondary school diploma.

Just as he tossed his worn clothes in the hamper he heard a double knock, a moment of silence and then another knock on his front door. Tybalt ambled out of the bedroom and zipped up his hoodie. He caught sight of an orange tabby pawing at Yarrow while he made his way back to the door.

"Your dog stole my cat." The words came the very second that Tybalt opened his door.

"Good to see you too," Tybalt answered, letting Anders in. "And my dog didn't steal anything. Your cat keeps mistaking my dog for a taxi."

Anders huffed.

"Cats are meant to be served. Ser Pounce-A-Lot just happens to be very aware of this. He can't help that Yarrow makes it so easy."

Laughing and shaking his head, Tybalt let his neighbour in and closed the door behind him.

Ser Pounce-A-Lot had, meanwhile, graduated to bathing one of Yarrow's ears, drawing a long suffering sigh from the dog.

Tybalt counted it as revenge for the daily early morning wake-up call.

"How were things at the hospital?" Tybalt asked.

"Eh." Anders shrugged. "Kid came into the emergency room. Had eaten half a battalion of toy soldiers on a dare."

Tybalt blinked.

"Half a-"

"Yes."

"How did he-"

"She, actually. And in pieces. Still kinda impressed. And hungry. What's for dinner?" Anders sauntered right to Tybalt's kitchen and opened the fridge.

"You know, last time I checked you had a kitchen in your place. And a fridge," Tybalt said, following Anders.

"Yeah. About that..." Ander's voice was muffled while he dug through the fridge. "Mine is kinda pulling an Alexander Fleming?"

"Anders!"

"That's me. The one and only. Or so everyone tells me they keep hoping."

"You're a doctor!"

"Yep. Got the debt to prove it. What about it?"

"Nutrition and- and- stuff! And things! And health!" Tybalt's hands fluttered about in shock, as though this didn't happen on a regular basis.

Anders came back out of the fridge with a jar of pickles. 

"Things and health, huh?"

"Yes! Health, mostly. Anders honestly, you have to be able to feed yourself."

"But I have such a loyal, caring friend who is a much, much better cook than I am."

Tybalt wasn't fluent in intonation and facial expressions, but he got the distinct impression that there was some sort of sarcasm going on. Or something. He squinted at Anders, who looked back at him all wide eyes and smiles, as if he hadn't just claimed a jar of pickles that wasn't even his.

Ugh.

Fine.

“We’re having noodle soup,” Tybalt informed him, shouldering past Anders. “With spinach and shrimp.”

He decided to ignore Anders’s fist pump.

“But you are going to help me get everything ready for game night and clean up after before others arrive.” Tybalt jabbed a finger Anders’s direction and gave him a half-hearted attempt at a glare. This was him taking a stance.

A pickle crunched between Anders’s teeth. He nodded, lid in one hand, jar in the other and half a pickle hanging from his lip as one of the world’s worst imitations of a cigar.

A long standing history of feeding the wayward doctor had taught Hawke that when it came to doing the dishes, Anders was best left with the drying rather than the actual washing. If Anders was forced to wash up, he’d run a constant argument that ‘honestly Hawke this is the twenty-first century there are things like dishwashers why don’t you get one that would be much easier’ and so on and so forth. No amount of counterarguments and ‘well, I like it this way’ could permanently silence his friend on the subject. When Anders was stuck doing the drying, however, Tybalt could at least splash him with water when he started up.

That usually shut him up.

On the downside, that also meant that by the time the doorbell rang to announce the first arrivals, Tybalt’s hands were covered in soapy suds and Anders had a pile of bubbles on his head.

To be fair, the others had walked in on much worse things. Like the time where Anders had got himself pinned to the floor by Yarrow and was happily drooled on while Tybalt couldn’t even think about getting up because he was laughing too hard.

Tybalt quickly dried his hands before sprinting for the door, passing by Yarrow who was currently subjected to having his tail groomed by Ser Pounce-A-Lot. Poor dog. He had to endure so much.

Opening the door revealed a grinning Varric, and Merrill carrying a large, covered tray right behind him. Knowing Merrill, Tybalt expected something very sweet and potentially chocolate-y on that dish. He couldn’t wait to find out if his suspicions were correct.

Because cookies, okay?

“Hey Varric, Merrill.”

“Hawke.” Varric briefly clapped a hand on Tybalt’s arm and walked in. “Blondie here already?”

“That’s King Blondie, Ruler of the Kingdom of Soapy Waters to you!” Anders yelled from the kitchen.

Varric shook his head and laughed, making his way to the couch.

“I brought cookies,” Merrill announced, holding up the tray. “Unicorn poop cookies!”

“Unicorn… poop cookies?” Tybalt wasn’t certain whether to be afraid or intrigued. He settled for a healthy mixture of the two. “How did you-”

He fell quiet as Merrill proudly lifted the aluminum foil from the tray.

“Tadaa!”

Right.

Yes.

Well.

He had to give her a point there. If there was such a thing as unicorn poop, this would be a good contender. They were definitely poop shaped. And glittery. And very, very rainbow coloured. Perhaps it would be for the best to not ask how much artificial colouring had gone into the creation of these. At least they’d be edible as opposed to being actual, well, poop.

He hoped.

Who even thought of these things?

“That is uhm… they look colourful?” At the very least. Tybalt was almost tempted to ask if they would glow in the dark, but with the cheerfully hopeful smile Merrill was giving him, he decided against it. “I’m sure they’ll be delicious. Make yourself at home. I have to save my dishes from Anders. Let Aveline in when she shows up, okay?”

Tybalt paused in the kitchen doorway, turning to see Varric laughing while Merrill got her cuddle on with Yarrow. Look at that. He had friends. He had friends in his home. That had seemed impossible ten years ago. Hell, just five years ago he had been anxiously hovering and endlessly plying Anders with tea just because his new neighbour had wanted to introduce himself. If this was possible, maybe he could figure out how to do the other stuff too.

“You okay there, Hawke?” Anders asked.

“Hmm?” Tybalt looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Just thinking.”

“Dangerous words, coming from you,” Anders teased.

“As long as you’re not the one saying them,” Tybalt scoffed. “C’mon, let’s finish this. We’ve got a Mario Kart tournament to get to.” And glittery rainbow poop shaped cookies.

* * *

The unicorn poop cookies turned out to be tasty, so much so in fact that Merrill spent the better part of the next half hour defending them with a wooden spoon that she had liberated from Tybalt’s kitchen. Apparently, they were meant for everyone and that included people who showed up late.

By whom Merill meant Aveline, who was presented with her very own glittery, rainbow coloured, poop-shaped cookie the second she came in.

He was pretty sure that Varric would have blue knuckles by the end of the evening, but that wasn’t his concern. No. Instead, he was focused on trying to make sure Wario got through the corner instead of falling into the water. If he made it, then he still stood a chance at defeating Me-

“Soooo, who was the guy you liked at the store?” Merrill asked, all deceptive innocence.

The innocence was a lie.

Tybalt yelped, fumbled his controller and was in turn rewarded by a brief, watery end for Wario.

“Merrill!” he yelped in indignation.

Great. Now he’d have to struggle to even make fourth place. Evil, evil friend.

“Wait a minute,” Anders cut in, switching the game to pause. “Guy? What guy?”

Tybalt hung his head. Great. Wonderful. Couldn’t he just have a hopeless, one-sided crush in peace and quiet anymore without people using it to make him crash into water?

“No one,” he mumbled, fiddling with the buttons on his controller.

“Hawke, c’mon, tell us. We’re all friends here,” Varric cajoled.

Tybalt let out a whine and let his head drop back against Aveline’s leg. He gave her a pleading look. Save me, Aveline, you’re my only hope.

“Who is this person?” she asked instead.

Traitor.

Tybalt huffed and sat up, casting a baleful glare at Merrill. She shrugged helplessly in return. Tybalt grabbed the last cookie from the plate as his due.

“There was just this guy,” Tybalt mumbled.

“I think we’ve established that there was a guy,” Aveline answered. “You just haven’t mentioned him before so we’re… curious.”

Tybalt caught the pause, knew the word that was there but left unspoken. _Protective_. He supposed that he should be thankful that they cared, but he couldn’t ignore the little bit of resentment. Would they be this nosy if he wasn’t autistic? Or would they let things go? He’d never know, yet he still wondered.

“Little hard to mention him when I only just met him today,” Tybalt said, unable to filter all the resentment from his voice.

“Hey, hey, we don’t mean anything by it.” Varric, this time, with the sunny smile in his words. “You just don’t date a lot so if there’s someone you like that way, it’s kinda unusual, y’know?”

“It’s just a guy, okay? He came into the store today to shelter from the rain and we ended up talking. He was nice. Didn’t ask about Yarrow, didn’t make me feel like I should start digging a hole in the earth to hide in. Now can we _please_ get back to the race?” It came out harsher than Tybalt intended, but he didn’t want to talk about Fenris. Not when Tybalt didn’t know if he’d ever see Fenris again or if Fenris would be happy to live the life of an umbrella thief just to avoid ever having to see him again.

“But-” Anders tried.

“I think we should do what Hawke said and get back to the race,” Aveline cut him off before he could finish the question.

Okay, so maybe Aveline wasn’t a traitor. Tybalt shot her a small smile, which she answered with a nod.

“Okay then. Everybody ready? Three, two-” Anders pressed start before completing the count down.

“Cheat! Cheat!” Merrill yelped, scrambling to keep Princess Peach on the road.

“All is fair in love and Mario Kart,” Anders countered, promptly driving Koopa Troopa into a bomb. “Who put that there?!”

“Like you said, Blondie, all is fair in love and Mario Kart.” Varric cheerfully drove Donkey Kong past Koopa Troopa.

Tybalt shook his head and resigned himself to trying to catch up. This track was _evil_.

Tybalt lost, in the end, naturally. Because he was a good, honest friend who didn’t stoop to dirty cheating tactics. He gave Anders a baleful glare. That sneeze had been far too well timed. One by one, his friends started to drift home. Anders had an early shift at the hospital and left with Ser Pounce-A-Lot. Yarrow stretched out thankfully once he was set free from the cat’s attention. Tybalt expected that Yarrow simply hadn’t realized that he was far bigger and heavier than the cat and if it came down to it, he would win. Or maybe he secretly liked the cat grooming him.

Merrill had to meet with the plumber the next morning because of the flooded toilet issue and took her empty plate back with her.

Varric stretched out on the couch and levered himself up.

“Well, I gotta go. I have a very, very busy day of avoiding my agent ahead of me,” he said, stifling a yawn behind his hand.

“How did you even get to to be such a successful author?” Aveline asked.

Shrugging, Varric shook his head. 

“Poor life decisions?”

“Yours or the people who gave you that book deal?”

“Both,” Tybalt volunteered as he wiped the table of smudges and crumbs before Yarrow decided to clean it for him.

“That sounds about right.” Varric laughed. He pulled on his coat and gave a tired wave as he opened the door. “See ya, Hawke. Aveline.”

Aveline didn’t move to get up. How was Tybalt supposed to politely prod her into leaving?

“Tybalt?”

Aw crap. When the first name and that tone came out, he knew he was in for it. Tybalt sighed and looked up, eyes on her bright red hair.

“About tonight… you know I only ask because I don’t want anyone to take advantage of you, right?” She shifted forward, eyes so intent on his face that it made Tybalt want to look anywhere but at her. Oh look, there was a strange little brown spot on the ceiling. Oh. No. That was a fly. Okay then.

“I’m not a kid that you need to protect from every shadow.” Tybalt gathered the glasses from the table in sharp, jerky movements. “I know that I made mistakes in the past but I’ve learned from them. Grown.”

She sighed.

“I know. I don’t mean to- Look. I know you can handle yourself and if anything comes out of this, you’ll have my full support. Okay?”

Tybalt nodded.

“Yeah, Okay.” He looked up, mischievous smile slowly dragging itself onto his features. “And I’ll just take comfort in the fact that even if I do ever end up dating someone, I can’t possibly be as hopeless as you and Donnic.”

That earned him a pillow to the face and a loud laugh from Aveline.

“You are awful!” she sputtered through her laughter.

Tybalt threw the pillow back to her, or at least tried to. It never hit its target, because Yarrow jumped up and snagged it from the air. If the humans got to play, he should get some fun out of it as well! He shook the pillow and bounced around Tybalt.

“Still not as awful as your flirting,” Tybalt shot back at Aveline before throwing himself at his dog in a bid to free the pillow before Yarrow tore it to pieces.


	4. Chapter 4

“How _dare_ you sell me this _filth?!_ ” the blond woman screeched at him. Her voice was as if a grating nasality had somehow managed to crossbreed with an ill-deserved sense of superiority and birthed a monstrosity that made Tybalt want to claw his eardrums out of his head more and more the longer she talked. He wasn’t certain if that was physically possible and part of him wanted to text Anders and ask him if it was. If anyone knew, it had to be the resident emergency doctor, right? Maybe he’d even seen it once.

With the stories Anders shared about the night shift, Tybalt wouldn’t be surprised.

“I’m sorry ma’am.” Tybalt twisted his fingers in his beads, eyes going over her shoulder. “What is the problem with the book?”

He hadn’t had a complaint about it yet. As far as he knew it was a good attempt at giving an overview of world religions. Sure, it wasn’t very in-depth, but that didn’t mean that she had to come and shout at him over it.

“The problem?! The problem?!”

It was objectively speaking amazing that the human voice could reach that pitch. Subjectively, it made Tybalt want to curl up under the counter. How could he make her stop? Okay, he knew a few ways but they would all result in losing his job and possible police charges. He was quickly running out of ideas.

A few of the customers who had been in line behind her suddenly discovered that they needed to go back and check for some more books.

“This- this _mockery_ dares to represent all that superstitious nonsense as valid believes! These people shouldn’t be encouraged. They should be brought to the light of the one true religion. You can’t sell this… this _smut_ to the masses.”

Tybalt liked his job, most of the time at least. People like this lady, though, often managed to drag out the parts of him that doubted and just wanted to spend the day at home surrounded by his various plants.

Plants were good.

Plants didn’t yell at him.

Plants didn’t complain about books like he had personally added the offending content.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” 

How was this his life? What had he ever done to deserve this? Okay, breathe in deeply. Neither bashing his face into the counter or setting his dog on a customer was an appropriate part of customer service. Even if he really, really wanted to.

He curled his fingers on the edge of the counter, fingernails digging in hard enough that the nail bed turned white with pressure, and tried to focus on the warmth radiating from Yarrow’s bulk.

“Look at me!” Her voice went up another decibel, at least, and she slapped the book she’d been shaking at him on the counter.

“I am sorry if you are disappointed in the book.” Tybalt dragged the words out from the back of his brain, though they fought him tooth and nail. They sounded clipped, mechanical, to his ears. His tongue fumbled over the syllables. The woman’s voice squeezed at his throat. “I will be happy to give you a refund.”

She slapped her hand down on the cover.

“You’re rude, slow and I don’t know why they insist on letting people like you work here. I want to speak to a manager. Now.”

“And why would that be?” Mahariel’s voice was mild and deceptively calm, yet still managed to make Tybalt jump.

Where had Mahariel come from?! Better yet, why hadn’t he showed up earlier? Before the lady had started yelling at Tybalt.

“Are you the manager here?” she demanded.

“I’m the owner.” Mahariel corrected her.

“Well, your employee here-”

“Is doing his job. Tybalt, could you please be so kind as to get this lady her refund.” Mahariel spared a short smile for Tybalt.

Tybalt’s shoulders relaxed a little. Ringing up a refund was familiar. He could do that. It didn’t involve talking. Words were not his friend at the moment.

“That is not- I demand an apology for his behaviour!” the woman sputtered. “He wouldn’t even look at me when I talked with him?”

“Talked with him?” Mahariel leaned forward a little. It never failed to impress Tybalt how someone a good two heads shorter than him could loom quite that impressively. Had to be the shoulders. They kind of looked like they could serve as two independent battering rams. Well, that and the general muscle that always made Tybalt wonder if Mahariel had taken part in those strongman shows at least once.

“You mean that you shouted at him. If anyone deserves an apology, it’s Tybalt. As it is, I suggest you leave and don’t come back.”

That was a lot of talking for someone who generally deemed any sentence with more than five words ‘lengthy’.

“I- that- I’m a paying customer!” She puffed up; as if that was beat all trump card. “I have rights!”

Mahariel looked up at her with a flinty smile. “And I have the right to deny service to people who are abusive to my employees.”

For a second, the woman looked stunned whereas Tybalt finally dared to breathe again. Mahariel was on his side. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

“People will hear about this.”

Tybalt cautiously pushed the refund for the woman across the counter. She snatched it up and sent one last, scathing glare at Tybalt before storming out of the store. She bumped into someone trying to enter the store, but didn’t even pause to apologize.

“Huh. Wonder who put a bee up her ass.”

It took Tybalt a moment to recognize the amused, warm rumble. He blinked, still feeling a little dazed. Varric was here? At what moment had Mahariel joined him behind the checkout?

“Waffles, you okay there?” Varric asked. His warm smile slowly turned into a concerned frown.

“Hawke?” the woman behind him asked. Oh, look, Aveline was there too.

“I’m fine.” He had to force the words out, though he could feel himself start to settle a little again now that the woman had left. “Just… just a customer. Can I maybe go sit, for a minute?”

Mahariel nodded. “Go. I’ll handle the store.”

Tybalt wandered into Mahariel’s office, passed the chairs and instead found a spot against the wall where he could slide down until he was seated on the floor. Yarrow took his cue and crawled as much into his human’s lap for as he was able. He managed to fit surprisingly well, given his sheer size. Tybalt dug one hand into Yarrow’s fur while his other hand began to compulsively click his beads through his fingers.

Chair legs scraped over the floor. Tybalt blinked at the noise and spotted Varric sitting down in the chair.

Aveline, meanwhile, took her position leaning against Mahariel’s desk.

“She was very…” Tybalt fumbled for a word, grasping at ones that didn’t cover the meaning and finally settled for something that didn’t even come close. “Loud.”

“I could go and arrest her,” Aveline offered.

“Or I can put ‘r in a novel. Have her attacked by honeybadgers or wolverines. Something fun like that.” Varric threw in a smile with his words.

Tybalt drew a deep breath and tried to smile. It felt like saran-wrap on his face.

“Just say the word,” Varric added.

“No. No. It’s okay. Please don’t arrest people without reason.” Tybalt fiddled with Yarrow’s floppy ears before casting a glance in Varric’s direction. “How would you even get a honeybadger into your novels? Or a wolverine?”

“I’m a writer. Making shit up is what I do. Hmmm… the case of the rabid honeybadger murderer.”

Tybalt gave Varric a baleful glare.

“I am so glad I’m not one of your characters. The stuff you put Donnen through…”

“And if you used even a fraction of your imagination to research proper police procedures, I wouldn’t have to put up with suspects saying ‘that’s not how Donnen does it’,” Aveline tagged on. Her eyes wrinkled at the corners, reminding Tybalt of them sitting on the roof of the shed while Bethany and Carver tried to find them. She’d been his only friend fifteen years ago, and look at her now. Still here. Still willing to go toe to toe with whoever treated him badly.

Wait a minute.

Tybalt’s head snapped from one to the other.

“Why are you here? Why are you both here? Right now?” he asked, though he had the sneaking suspicion that he already knew the answer.

Aveline suddenly found the picture on the calendar very interesting. Either that or she was trying to avoid looking at him. Tybalt’s eyes flew to Varric and narrowed.

“Eh… avoiding my agent?” Varric tried.

Tybalt was not buying it. He knew Varric too well to be fooled quite that easily.

“Varric,” he pressed on.

“Well… technically…”

“ _Varric_.”

“It was Aveline’s idea.”

Tybalt thudded the back of his head against the wall. “Please tell me you didn’t decide to come over and spy in case the guy from yesterday shows up again.”

His very reasonable, as far as Tybalt was concerned, request was met with a tell-tale silence.

Oh for the love of…

“Tell me that you didn’t-”

“Tybalt,” Mahariel cut in from the doorway. “There’s someone here to see you. I can tell him to go away, if you want.”

Tybalt felt his stomach drop. Half pushing Yarrow from his lap, he squirmed back to his feet. His throat felt dry. If this was whom he thought it was, Lady Luck was really having a laugh at his expense.

“I’ll be there in a second,” he told his boss before turning to his friends. “We’ll have words, later. Lots of words.”

He jabbed his fingers in both their directions for good measure.

Tybalt’s stomach did a little flip flop and his breath caught in his throat for a second when he left the office and saw Fenris standing to the side of the cash register. For a brief, fleeting moment, he was tempted to turn around and go back into office and pretend he hadn’t seen anyone. He couldn’t do this now! He was still jittery from the woman. He’d make a fool out of himself and fumble his words or blurt out something wildly inappropriate or-

“Hawke?”

Oh, Fenris’s voice, though, made him feel like a cat basking in the afternoon sun. The fact that Fenris looked about as awkward as Tybalt felt only helped to ease his mind out of the panicked circles it had been running around in. The Flash had nothing on his brain when it was in panic mode.

Tybalt felt acutely aware of the way Aveline and Varric tried to position themselves behind him so they could look through the door opening and see Fenris without being obvious about it.

They bitterly failed at the not being obvious part.

Feeling just a little vengeful, Tybalt closed the door behind him. Hah! Take that, nosy friends!

“This was a mistake. You’re at work. I shouldn’t have come here to bother you,” Fenris said before Tybalt even had a chance to formulate a greeting that went beyond ‘ehuh-bah-guh’.

“No! Don’t go!” Oh crap, talk about sounding overly eager. He had to tone it down before Fenris realized Tybalt hadn’t had a date in six years and might have begun to develop a bit of a crush based on one single meeting. “I mean- that is to say- I… uh… I’m on my break?”

Tybalt cast a very quick look at Mahariel, who nodded. Thank the stars above for bosses who understood.

“So you can bother me- I mean, not that you’re bothering me at all. Absolutely not. I- uh- can I help you with something?” Why was he allowed to talk with people without adult supervision? Oh. Wait. He was an adult. Crap.

When did that happen?

A very brief hint of something — Tybalt liked to imagine that it was a smile — twitched at the corners of Fenris’s lips.

Tybalt heard the door behind him slowly open again. Someone needed to oil those hinges.

“I wanted to thank you for the tea yesterday,” Fenris said. “And return the umbrella.”

Tybalt had seen films that went roughly like this. One of them would smoothly suggest they go for a cup of tea again or make a joke or, well, anything that would get the ball rolling. Tybalt was acutely, painfully, aware that he was not romantic lead material. Ever. And even then, hardly any of the films he and Merrill had watched featured two guys. What if Fenris wasn’t into men?

What if he was straight?

What if he was a serial killer?

What if he was a _straight_ serial killer?

Stop it, brain, this was getting ridiculous. He really needed to stop watching so many crime shows. They made him think that everyone was a potential serial killer.

He should really try and say something now, though, preferably before Fenris left.

“You don’t- that is- I mean- You don’t have to thank me for anything. I… uhm… I quite liked talking with you.” Tybalt twisted his fingers together. Oh god could he get any more cliché. He was better than this! He knew he was! At least, he was in his imagination. Sadly, reality was not playing along today.

“Ah, Hawke, there you are.” Varric stepped out beside Tybalt. “Ready to grab that coffee?”

Tybalt gave Varric a wide-eyed look, not unlike one a deer would give an oncoming semi truck. What was he up to? They weren’t going to get coffee. Were they? He didn’t remember it at least. Tybalt looked to Aveline at his left. Perhaps she had an answer, but all he got was a little nod.

Varric and Aveline had to be up to something.

Oh hell. He was screwed.

He turned back to see what Fenris was making of this, only to discover that the twitch of a smile was gone.

“I won’t keep you if you’re going out with your friends,” Fenris said.

“You could come with us!” Tybalt blurted out and immediately internally cursed his lagging brain to mouth filter. “I mean, if you want to.”

“If you’re certain.” Fenris hesitated, looking from Varric to Aveline and back to Tybalt.

“Are you kidding?” Varric answered. “You can come along. Any friend of Hawke’s is a friend of ours. Isn’t that right? Aveline?”

“Quite,” Aveline said, with the faint bemusement of someone who was going along with this because arguing against Varric only ended up costing more energy, and half the time had you believing that the sky was, indeed, green.

“Sure, sure, the more the merrier!” Varric added.

Part of Tybalt wanted to argue against Varric. More was not always better. He didn’t like more. On the other hand, more time to get to know Fenris had to be good. Right? He couldn’t hopelessly embarrass himself over coffee, could he? Especially not if his friends were there to back him up in case he needed it.

Aveline bumped her hand briefly into Tybalt’s. “It’ll be fine,” she whispered. “There’s no harm in a cup of coffee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hah! I wasn't even certain whether I was going to finish this chapter on time, but here it is! Life got a little hectic there, what with my dad being in the hospital. He's okay now, though, and was released yesterday. Thank goodness for that.


	5. Chapter 5

Varric and Avaline were still plotting against him. Or for him. Right then, Tybalt counted it as being against him. They were messing with the order of things! He was supposed to walk next to Aveline. He _always_ walked next to Aveline when they were going out for something. Except when Donnic came along too, but he was Aveline’s husband. Varric was the guy responsible for any and all of her premature gray hairs.

And that left him to walk with-

Oh.

_Ooooooh._

That explained why he as still single after all these years despite his fervently not wanting to be.

Okay, good job Aveline, Varric. So Tybalt was here, walking right next to Fenris in awkward, awkward silence. Should he say something? He should absolutely say something. He should say something that would dazzle Fenris with his charming wit and intelligence and-

“So… the weather’s better than yesterday.” Tybalt heard the words come out of his own mouth. His own traitorous mouth.

That was not dazzling!

That wasn’t even slightly on the witty side.

There was not even a smattering of intelligence in that statement, unless observing the obvious counted as intelligent these days — given the people who ran the country that wouldn’t surprise him that much, actually.

Yeah. He was just going to lie down in the gutter in shame, where he belonged.

“Thankfully so. Otherwise this walk would have been rather more unpleasant,” Fenris said.

Be smooth, Tybalt, be smooth. Make a comment about sharing an umbrella. Come on.

“Yeah,” Tybalt said instead. Maybe he should just quit while he wasn’t too far behind. Except that he couldn’t. Varric would never let him live this down. Varric would write him into at least three more books. Varric would use this as inspiration. Tybalt would not go down in literary history — or whatever the variant was for cheap crime novels — as the guy who missed even the perfect opportunity.

What would Carver do-

No. Wait, Bad plan. Abort. Abort. Someone who got a dog tattoo that could be made to bark was not a role model and not someone whose life choices Tybalt should emulate. He was doing a bad enough job of it as it was without Carver’s help, thank you very much. Bethany. Bethany was a much better choice. As far as he knew, she was still barking tattoo free and if she wasn’t, he really didn’t want to know.

He wished he didn’t know about Carver’s.

“Yarrow’s wet dog smell alone would have put a dampener on things.”

“Really?” Fenris asked.

“Yeah. Still not as bad as the time he jumped into a pond and came out covered in weeds and algae and dead stuff.” Tybalt reached to scratch Yarrow right where his head met his neck. Yarrow promptly threw his entire weight against Tybalt’s legs in appreciation of the gesture, causing Tybalt to stumble for a second and bump into Fenris. Fenris’s hands shot out, catching Tybalt by the elbow and side in a bid to help steady him.

“Everything alright?” Aveline asked.

“Fine, fine, all’s fine. Just Yarrow throwing his weight around.” Tybalt cast a quick smile over his shoulder at Aveline.

Fenris snorted. An actual smile swept over his face and it struck Tybalt just how young Fenris suddenly looked. Their eyes met, briefly, and Fenris’s snort turned to a cough as they hastily looked away.

He’d made Fenris smile! An actual, honest, undeniable smile! Not just a little twitch either. And all that with an awful pun. Tybalt smiled so widely that his cheeks hurt. Maybe he wasn’t doomed after all.

“Hey, Waffles, dunno where you’re going, but you just went past the coffee place.” Varric cut into Tybalt’s internal jubilations with a few dry words.

Ah, where would he be without his trusty friends to deflate him?

Tybalt halted, turned around slowly and yes, indeed. There it was. Squeezed in right between a grilled cheese sandwich shop and a sushi place. The sky blue paint on the sign peeling and flaking away at the the B of Has Beans.

There were usually some chairs and tables outside for people to sit at but, while yesterday’s downpour wasn’t on repeat, there was still enough of a chill in the air to make even Tybalt consider stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Aveline pulled the door open. The scent of warmth and coffee and oven-fresh cookies hit Tybalt square in the face and dragged him into the little café by the nose. A quick glance around told him that his seat was still free, in the corner at the far end. He could sit there with his back against the wall and have a clear sight of the place.Yarrow was so used to that particular spot by then that he simply trudged right to it and all but collapsed in front of the table with a sigh.

Tybalt quickly claimed his chair. Aveline took the one to his left whereas Varric sat down across from him, which left Fenris with only one option. Really. They were laying it on a bit thick there, weren’t they? Tybalt leveled a suspicious glare at his friends, though it seemed to impress neither of them. Aveline just looked at him as if their behaviour was completely normal while Varric studied the menu.

As if they hadn’t been there often enough that the staff had their orders memorized. Well, except for Fenris, who sat in his chair with a ramrod straight back, eyes on his hands and knuckles white with pressure.

They were sitting close enough that could feel the warmth radiating from Fenris, or maybe that was just Tybalt’s imagination.

Well.

This couldn’t possibly be any more awkward. Or was it less awkward? Tybalt frowned, trying to work out the sentence structure. He managed about a second before deciding that whoever had designed English had probably done all the other languages first and had been tired. Biting his bottom lip, he found his beads and began to slide the bracelet around his wrist.

Someone would have to say something, sooner or later, maybe even him, but he was at a complete loss as for what. He’d already used the weather and even Tybalt knew that there was a hard limit of resorting to weather for conversation. That limit was one.

“So…” Aveline said, after a few moments of silence that had left Tybalt considering if he could just hurl himself out the window and escape into the sunset. If there was a sunset. Awfully hard to come by those in the middle of a cloud overcast day like this one.

“Since you’re not an umbrella thief,” Aveline went on, oblivious to Tybalt’s urge to stage a dramatic escape, “are there any other crimes you’d like to confess to?”

“Aveline!” Tybalt yelped in horror.

Other people turned to look at them.

Right. Indoor voices.

Next to him, Fenris blinked as Varric burst out laughing. Great help there. Really. Wonderful. Gold star for the effort. Bursting through the window was beginning to sound more like an actual option instead of a flight of his imagination that would end in stitches and Anders lecturing him on the use of this newfangled invention called doors.

“You can’t just ask that,” Tybalt said, quieter now but no less horrified.

Aveline raised an eyebrow. Tybalt resisted the urge to kick her under the table, if only because, knowing his luck, he would accidentally kick Fenris instead. Or Yarrow. Either way, the consequences would be disastrous.

“You’ll have to excuse Aveline,” Varric told Fenris, an amused chuckle lingering in his voice, “she doesn’t believe in things like being off the clock.”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Tybalt tagged on, growing anxious in Fenris’s silence.

Fenris inclined his head slightly down, a steady look aimed at Aveline’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “There is nothing that I would like to confess to.”

“Great, now that that’s out of the way, I’ll go get us something to drink. Aveline, Tybalt, the usual? Yeah? Great. Fenris?”

“I’d like coffee, please. Black.”  
Varric nodded, pulling himself out of his chair. “Right, so while I go and get us that, why don’t you, Tybalt, tell Fenris about the time no one got dessert because Aveline decided to tackle the waiter in the restaurant?”

“He was a suspect trying to make a run for it!” Aveline cried out in frustration.

“To be fair,” Tybalt said, unable to suppress a grin while he traced idle patterns on the table, “running when you are coming after them should be classed as survival instinct.”

Tybalt cast a hopeful sideways glance at Fenris. Maybe he’d earned another smile, or even a chuckle. Nothing. Instead, Fenris seemed more interested in the table than either Aveline or Tybalt. Tybalt deflated a little, shoulders drooping. He felt a nudge against his foot. It had to be from Aveline. He looked at her, about to ask what she wanted, but her smile and slight nod told him enough.

Right.

Time to tell that story then.

“So… uh… two years ago we were going to this place. Restaurant. Thing. Uhm. No. Wait. I mean, we were going to- no let me start again. Sorry.” He gave a short, sheepish grin and ducked his head. “We were at a restaurant for Merrill’s birthday. Oh, wait, you don’t know Merrill, right? She runs the flower shop next to the bookstore.” Tybalt launched into the story in a jumble of words that tripped over each other but Fenris was looking at him. Looking like he was really listening and not doing that half questioning frown that people usually gave him or, even worse, telling him to stop because the story was too difficult to understand with how he was telling it.

His chest felt lighter with the realisation.

It took about two stories, two and a quarter if Tybalt felt like getting technical, before Fenris’s spine discovered that there was another option to sitting than exhaustingly straight. Fenris’s shoulders relaxed with every word. He even smiled by the time they reached the ‘and so we had to organize a search and rescue because Tybalt thought he saw a rare weed’ story. It hadn’t been a weed, Tybalt had defended himself, but a herb and there is a difference Varric, thank you very much.

With empty cups and a half finished platter of cookies between them, Fenris looked at the clock on the wall and his smile dimmed.

“I should leave,” he said. “How much do I-”

“It’s on me,” Varric cut him off with an expansive gesture at the left over cookies. “These are all mine now.”

“I would rather pay,” Fenris insisted.

“We invited you,” Aveline countered. “You can treat us next time.”

Tybalt’s eyes widened. Why couldn’t he do that? Just casually slip in something like that? He was still trying to figure out what to say!

“If you insist.” Fenris said, begrudgingly accepting the offer. “Thank you. Goodbye.”

He grabbed his coat as Aveline, Varric and Tybalt wished him farewell. Fenris turned to leave.

Tybalt watched, stamping down on the urge to whine at Fenris’s retreating back. The urge lasted only until he received a kick in the shins.

“What was that for?!” he demanded, only barely remembering to keep his tone down as he glared at Varric.

“You can’t just let him walk off,” Varric insisted. “Go after him.”

“He’s right,” Aveline said. “You can’t just count on him showing up at the bookstore.”

They had a point there. Tybalt gave them both a wide eyes, panicked look for a split second before he shot out of his chair and after Fenris, leaving a confused Yarrow behind.

“Fenris!” Tybalt called skidding to a halt outside of the shop. Thank goodness, Fenris hadn’t been that fast in leaving. He hadn’t even crossed the road yet. “Wait!”

Fenris turned and blinked, watching Tybalt jog up to him. “Yes?”

Crap.

He really should have thought of something to say before now.

“I… uhm… number?” That was not a sentence. He’d been fine mere minutes ago. Why couldn’t he do this? This was new and unfamiliar territory. Sharing stories with friends was familiar enough, but exchanging phone numbers verged on exploring unknown continents. “I meant to ask, could I maybe get your phone number? Please?”

A smile spread across Fenris’s face that made Tybalt’s heart leap into a somersault and Fenris held his hand out. Tybalt stared at the hand. What was-

“Can I have your phone?” Fenris asked.

“Ah. Right. Yeah. Sorry.” Tybalt fished it out of his pocket and unlocked it before handing it over. He watched Fenris’s slim fingers dart over the screen. Tybalt hoped fervently, with all his heart, that it would actually be Fenris’s number and not a fake. Or the number to a pizza place. Or whatever else people gave when they didn’t want to be called by the person asking for their number.

“Send me a text,” Fenris said, handing the phone back over.

Okay, Sending a text. He could do that. Sending a text wasn’t rocket science or literary analysis, except for the part where it sort of was the latter. People read stuff into words beyond what was actually written. They gave it meanings beyond what Tybalt could often predict and inferred tones out of a few sentences and-

No.

He was calm. He was smooth. He was in no way, shape or form going to fuck up whatever tiny chance he had here by freaking out over the possible implications of what he would send.

He tapped out a message, back-spacing several times for typing errors. His thumbs were far too big for these fiddly little touch screens. _‘This is Tybalt Hawke. Texting you like you asked. Hi.’_ That wasn’t so bad, was it? It could be way worse.

To make matters even better, Fenris’s phone actually beeped. Tybalt did his best to keep from staring and, well, he failed. Miserably. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Fenris’s face. Fenris’s eyebrow arched and he looked up.

“I enjoyed this,” Fenris said. “Thank you. I do have to go now, though. I promised my roommate to get groceries today, but I’ll see you soon.”

* * *

Evening had fallen and the only sound in Tybalt’s apartment, besides Yarrow’s snoring and occasional whine in his sleep, was Tybalt typing an email and deleting just about every other word. If there was one person in his family he wanted to tell about Fenris, about how much he hoped to stand a chance with the guy who didn’t cut him off or look weirdly at him or ask why he needed Yarrow, it was Bethany. He loved his brother and mother as well, but things had always been easier with his sister, like they had been with dad.

He just couldn’t find a way to put the whirlwind of thoughts and maybes and what-ifs into words.

Tybalt pressed on backspace again, watching the cursor devour letters like a ravenous beast, when his phone suddenly beeped. The sound was startlingly loud in his apartment and Tybalt flailed in response.

Fenris’s name was displayed on the screen.

A message, he realized, and for a second it felt as if his entire insides compressed into a short lived ball of panic.

Calm down. It was just a message. It wasn’t like Fenris was actually popping out of the phone like it was some technological floo.

Tybalt opened the message only to find a very sad, wilty looking mint plant. What the-

The phone buzzed in his hand with a second message.

_‘Do you think this plant can be saved?’_

Tybalt stared at the screen. What did someone say to that?

_‘This is Fenris, by the way.’_

Right! Answering now. Coherency and figuring out what was going on later.

_‘Have you watered it?’_ he sent back.

_‘Possibly.’_

_‘Possibly? Don’t you remember? The poor plant! Do I need to rescue it from you?’_ Was that too familiar? Oh god it was too fam-

_‘Are you in the habit of rescuing plants?’_

_‘I could be! Won’t anyone think of the poor plants?’_ See? He could be funny. There. That right there was funny. No matter what Varric thought of it.

_‘I bought it at the grocery store. I saw it and remembered you like herbs.’_

Was his face on fire? It felt like it was. Had Fenris- No, he shouldn’t assume. But what if…

_‘Try to give it some water. If all else fails, put it in hot water and call it mint tea.’_

Tybalt paused for a second, eying the email he was trying to respond to where Bethany was telling about something she’d done.

_‘Hey,’_ he tapped. _‘Do you want to do something together? Go somewhere? Maybe?’_ His thumb hovered over the send button for a few seconds before, in a surge of shaky knees and trembling fingers and shuddering breath, he hit the button.

For a long, painful moment, he wished that he could unsend the message, but it had been read. He couldn’t take that back.

_‘I would like that very much. Is there something you’d like?’_

Tybalt almost dropped the phone then and there.

It took a remarkable effort to send something that wasn’t riddled with spelling errors. _‘I was gonna go to the nursery outside of town, pick up some new plants for my balcony. I don’t suppose you’d like that.’_

Of course he wouldn’t. Who’d like to go out and look at plants for fun?

_‘That sounds great. When do you want to go?’_

Breathe, Tybalt. Breathing would be good. Oxygen is a good thing. It’s your friend. Maybe he should ask Anders. Or Varric. Or Merril. Maybe he should- No. He was a grown man. He could do this. He was managing fine so far. He didn’t need people to hold his hand through this. _‘Saturday sound good?’_

_‘Saturday sounds great. Meet at the book store? What time?’_

_‘Book store’s fine. Ten am?’_

_‘I will meet you there.’_

Tybalt spun around in his chair, letting out a sound that woke Yarrow from his slumber. Yes! Tybalt grinned widely. He’d done it! They were going to do something! And he’d done that without anyone kicking his shins or telling him to make a move.


	6. Chapter 6

Fenris wasn’t there yet. Tybalt bounced up and down from his toes to his heels, hands stuffed deep in his pocket. Every time he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, he scraped the edge of the curb with his toes. Yarrow sat next to him, an occasional huff escaping from the dog.

It was okay, Tybalt told himself. Fenris would show up. Tybalt was just early. A whole twenty minutes early. He had always taken the ‘rather ten minutes early than one late’ thing to new extremes. It was easy to forget that some people were simply punctual without taking a much earlier bus, or leaving the house thirty minutes before they actually had to, or panicking because they had a flat tire and they might be a few minutes later than they had planned for.

Tybalt often wondered what it would be like to be one of those people.

Except he wasn’t. He was Tybalt and he was always early if he could help it, even despite his natural aversion to this horrible morning thing that people insisted on having as an obligatory part of the day.

‘He’s not here yet,’ he texted to Anders. ‘What if he doesn’t show up?’

What if he got stood up?

It would be a new experience and the last time he’d been in therapy the psychologist had encouraged those, but all in all Tybalt would rather avoid ever having that experience. Ever.

The E.R. theme song rang all too loudly through the street, signalling an answer from his friend.

‘If he stood you up I know a woman who owes me a ton of favours.’

Tybalt blinked at his phone.

Right.

‘I don’t think I want to know the details about this woman or why she owes you so many favours. Please don’t tell me.’

‘Doctor-patient confidentiality ;) .’

That did not make things better. If anything, that smiley only served to make Tybalt more suspicious about these favours.

‘Not even slightly comforting,’ Tybalt sent back.

‘Damn, gotta work on my bedside manner some more then.’

Tybalt shook his head and bit his bottom lip before slowly tapping out his next message. ‘I don’t want to be stood up.’

‘If he ditches you, he’s an ass and you’ll drop by the hospital so we can come up with outlandish revenge schemes. I bet I can get Nate in on it.’

‘We’re not involving Howe in any of this!’ Tybalt jabbed the send button with vengeance.

‘Don’t underestimate the power of his hose ;) ’

Tybalt fumbled for a second while trying to trigger the all caps on his phone. ‘ANDERS! HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW THAT?!’

‘Firemen’s water hose, what do you take me for? And a lively imagination.’

Tybalt could picture the look of pure, sugar-wouldn’t-melt-on-his-tongue innocence on Anders’s face. Mostly because he had seen it plenty of times in person. Tybalt didn’t know what he must have done in the past to end up with Anders as a friend now, but it must have either been extremely terrible or equally amazing.

Someone scraped their throat behind him and Tybalt yelped. He only barely rescued his phone from what would have been a disastrous plummet onto the pavement. Whirling around, clutching his phone to his chest in a death grip, Tybalt found himself staring at Fenris.

“You’re early!” he blurted out.

Fenris arched an eyebrow. “Not as early as you,” he answered.

Right. This was true, Tybalt couldn’t argue with him there. Tybalt had been standing on the curb for a good fifteen minutes or so now. That didn’t change the fact that Fenris had shown up early to go to a plant nursery with Tybalt.

Did this count as a date? Were they now dating or had he strong-armed Fenris into running an errand with him? This would be so much easier if dating came with forms. Sign in triplicate, initial at the roman numerals, congratulations, you are now officially dating. Except this was real life and not Tybalt’s imagination. Sadly, reality was much more confusing and messy.

He could always just ask. He could also run screaming off into the horizon with his trousers on his head. Neither of those were going to happen.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Tybalt said instead. “I mean, I know it’s not exactly the most exciting thing to do on a Saturday.”

Fenris gave him a long, steady look. Tybalt fidgeted, giving a little bounce onto his heels and back to his toes, twisting his fingers together. Was he supposed to say something?

Yarrow got up and pressed his head against Fenris’s hands. At least one of them was going for what he wanted.

“You enjoy it, do you not?” Fenris asked.

Tybalt swallowed nervously. “Y-yeah. I do. Looking at new plants and stuff, I mean.”

Ah, wonderful, the eloquence monster struck again. Plants and stuff. Yeah. Right.

“Then I will too.” Fenris inclined his head slightly with his words. “And enjoy the chance to get to know you better.”

A voice that sounded suspiciously like a mix of Aveline and Tybalt’s mother niggled at the back of Tybalt’s mind that this was going too smoothly. Something was bound to rear its ugly head and trash whatever was going on. He was pretty certain that the universe and Lady Luck herself had entered in a binding agreement that he would never get lucky in any meaning of the word.

No.

He was not going to listen to that voice. Nothing good would come of that and both his mother and Aveline tended to be a bit on the… How to put it nicely? Nearly smothering overprotective side? Yes, that sounded good.

“Do you have a garden?” Tybalt asked, grasping for something to continue the conversation with.

Fenris shrugged.

“Just the one mint plant.”

“Y’know, I’m pretty open minded about what counts as a garden, but one bedraggled plant on death’s door does not even come close to the lowest requirement. We can get you some plants while we’re there.” He paused, for a second. Not everyone liked gardens. Maybe Fenris didn’t want one and was just doing this to be nice. “If you want one, I mean. I’m not some greenery dictator.”

Was there such a thing as greenery dictator? He’d have to look it up when he got back home.

Fenris chuckled. It was a low, throaty sound, just a little above a breath and it brought Tybalt up short. What was it about Fenris’s voice that made his mind go into happy little puddle mode?

“I am certain your regime would be better than what most dictators offer.”

Tybalt opened his mouth to reply, raising a finger as if to emphasize a point, even going as far as to mouth an Ah before he realized that he had no idea what he even wanted to say.

“We can take the bus from the stop down the street from here,” he settled for saying. “Unless you have a car?”

Fenris shook his head.

“No car.”

The bus is was, then. Tybalt turned left, but froze mid-motion and stared at the window of Merrill’s florist shop. A pair of big eyes stared back at him, right between two buckets of daisies. Merrill gave a smile that Tybalt supposed was meant to be encouraging.

“Is everything alright?” Fenris asked from his side.

Tybalt blinked and forced himself to complete the turn as if he hadn’t seen one of the poorest attempts at spying. Fenris didn’t know the truth about the concentrated level of mayhem among Hawke’s friends. The later he found out, the better. Or maybe Tybalt could just hire new friends.

Who didn’t spy on him.

And who didn’t threaten to call in dubious favours from unnamed women.

Ah, who was he kidding? He wouldn’t trade them in the world. Even if he could, he was pretty sure the warranty had expired by now.

“No, there’s nothing. Everything’s fine.” He smiled wide and warm at Fenris. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The bus ride to the plant nursery was as familiar to Tybalt by then as the stairs in his apartment building were. He usually only had one companion, though, and while he wouldn’t trade Yarrow for the world, he didn’t hold up very well as a conversationalist. Yarrow had been trained to keep quiet and not take up more space than a dog of his size needed. Just because dogs were allowed on busses didn’t mean they couldn’t be kicked off if people complained about them.

Usually, if he went with someone, it was Aveline. They had a conversation routine. He’d ask about her work, she would answer and ask about his, and they would work their way down a well established list of subjects from there.

He had no such list with Fenris. He would just have to try Aveline’s and see how things went. Silence felt uncomfortable, as if he should be doing something. It made him all too aware of the way the armrest dug into his side and the quiet, high pitched wheezy sound coming from the engine.

“So… how’s your job?” he asked. The volume of his voice startled even Tybalt. Indoor voices, he reminded himself.

“Good,” Fenris replied. He remained silent for a minute.

Tybalt fidgeted his fingers under the band of beads on his wrist.

“How about yours?” Fenris asked.

“It’s okay.” Tybalt shrugged. “I like my boss.” Mahariel had given him a chance no one else had, but Tybalt could do without the entitled customers whose only purpose in life seemed to be giving retail workers a hard time. He’d signed up for the books, not to be yelled at over whatever slight the customers had imagined into their subjective reality this time around. “What do you do, actually?”

“I am a bartender at Den.”

Tybalt couldn’t help the disgruntled nose scrunch when Fenris mentioned the club. Athenril used to hang out there and the least thought about those days, the better.

“I do suppose it is that bad,” Fenris commented.

“What?” Tybalt stared at him in utter confusion.

“Your expression.”

Ah. That.

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it!” Tybalt hastened to correct himself. “Not at you, at least. I knew someone who was a regular there we… uh… didn’t part on amicable terms?” Bloodied knuckles, split lips and snarled insults came to mind. He had been so angry in those days. Thank goodness for Aveline dragging him out before he’d dug himself in too deep.

“I don’t really go to clubs.” He glanced at Fenris. Would that be a deal breaker? The idea of stepping foot in a place with such loud music and so many people bumping into him and shouting sent a wave of nausea sweeping through his gut and claws squeezing his throat. He focused his eyes on the tips of his shoes, pressed the tip of his tongue behind his front teeth and breathed in. He held his breath for a few seconds and then let go. He felt Yarrow shift to lean against his legs.

“Are you all right?” Fenris asked, his voice dipping low and quiet with words aimed only at Tybalt.

Tybalt nodded with a rueful smile. “Yeah. Just a little… This is new. I get a little shaky with new stuff.”

He spun the beads faster around his wrist, bracing for questions that were sure to come. All he got instead was an affirmative hum. Tybalt squinted at Fenris.

“Why don’t you ask?”

Fenris looked up. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t ask about why I need Yarrow or what just happened. Not that I mind-” Tybalt’s eyes wandered to the trees they were speeding past “-but everyone always asks.”

Fenris bumped his knee against Tybalt’s, a brief, glancing touch that left warmth spreading through Tybalt’s leg. “Those are answers to volunteer, not for me to demand. If you need something, tell me and I will do my best.”

Tybalt didn’t know what to say to that. He smiled, then blinked as he recognized the corner the bus turned. “Ah… Our stop is coming up.”

The walk from the bus stop was short, only crossing a small parking lot. It wasn’t much to look at, really, but stepping into the plant nursery was in a way like coming home. Every time, no matter how many years had passed, Tybalt still had the sensation that his father should be at his side, list in hand, squinting over the edge of his glasses at his illegible handwriting. The list always had what his father had deemed to be useful plants: vegetables, herbs, and fruit bearing plants with the exception for a few snapdragons and lilies because mother liked those. There had never been roses in the little plot of land behind their small home.

Tybalt had no roses in his home, none adorned his balcony, even though his father was long gone.

“I’m gonna grab us a cart,” he announced, veering to the right to do just so. The metal rattled as he pulled one out of the row. The wheels bumped over the edges of the concrete slabs. The plastic handgrips felt too smooth under his fingers. He remembered being six and his father putting him in the cart, giving him the oh so very important task of directing them.

“Any plants you’re looking for?” Tybalt asked as Fenris fell in step next to him while he navigated through the maze of decorative jars and pots and things he neither knew the name for nor wished to but in neon colours and textures that made him shudder just looking at them.

“Not so certain whether that is wise,” Fenris responded.

“Oh? But you got that mint plant.” Or had Tybalt somehow misunderstood that?

“I am uncertain as to whether I would wish to inflict my roommate’s thumb of death on another unsuspecting piece of flora.”

Tybalt picked up on a low rumble in Fenris’s voice, almost like a chuckle with amusement woven through the sound. He turned to look at Fenris, hoping to catch a hint of a smile. Fenris was smiling, not a wide, cheek splitting grin like Tybalt was used to from Varric or Merrill. Fenris’s expression looked almost private.

Tybalt had never understood the butterflies in someone’s stomach phrase, but he definitely felt a suspicious flutter at that moment. That had better not be this morning’s milk. He knew he should have checked the expiration date.

“Your roommate has a thumb of death?” Tybalt asked, visions rearing up in the back of his mind of someone dashing around a room with a skeletal thumb while antagonizing whatever plant life that had the misfortune of crossing their path.

That was probably not what Fenris had meant, but Tybalt made a mental note that he should tell Varric about it regardless. Someone with a thumb of death would fit right into Varric’s novels. Somewhere.

“She does, if her cooking is anything to go by,” Fenris grumbled.

Tybalt blinked. That sounded a bit dramatic. “How bad can she possibly be?”

Fenris levelled Tybalt a look that was half resignation, half what Anders would probably term ‘oh your poor sweet summer child’ — Tybalt wasn’t a summer child, thank you very much, he was born in fall. “Take the worst that you can imagine and double that.”

“No one,” he insisted, “can be _that_ bad.”

Fenris snorted.

“Isabela is many things, but even a slightly competent cook, she is not.”

“There’s a story there, but I’m not certain I want to know it.” He squinted at Fenris. He did kind of want to know it, but there was an entirely too real risk of him showing up at Fenris’s door with fully cooked meals. He anticipated that it would be inappropriate to dig through the internet to find addresses of people because they couldn’t be trusted to feed themselves.

Tybalt abandoned the cart to veer to the left and picked up a planter with young sage. The leaves were still fresh and felt fragile against his fingers.

“Probably not.” Fenris agreed. “What did you imagine? It must be bad if you think no one can be twice as bad as that.”

Tybalt almost dropped the plant. His stomach contracted in sheer horror at the memory of it alone.

“Wellll…” If Bethany never heard of him sharing this story, she would never exact revenge on him like only little sisters could, right? Right? Right. He could only hope. If there was one thing he knew about his sister, it was that she was queen of creative revenge. “My sister baked a birthday cake for me when I turned nineteen.”

He paused, making a show of putting three of the sage plants in the cart while trying to figure out how he could share the ‘and then she nearly poisoned us all’ without making her seem bad. Well, it hadn’t really been poisoning.

“She switched the salt and sugar and didn’t taste test,” Tybalt blurted out.

Fenris blinked once, twice.

“That… that could not have been pleasant.”

“It really, really wasn’t.”

Tybalt couldn’t hide the shudder at the memory of that first bite. Poor Bethany. She’d tried so hard too.

“I can imagine,” Fenris said, still with that same thread of amusement that Tybalt had heard earlier. “But she tried, and that matters, does it not?”

“Yeah, of course! I mean, we still joke about it from time to time. Do you have siblings?”

And just like that, Fenris’s face shut down. The little smile playing on his lips wiped away, his eyes closed off, leaving Tybalt wishing that there was some kind of rewind button on his mouth. It was not the first time that he had felt like that but oh dear god did he wish for it harder than most other times now. Oh god, what if his family had tossed him out? Or what if they were _dead_? Way to go, Tybalt, dragging up a painful trauma on what was supposed to be a harmless little shopping trip.

Yarrow huffed and shuffled his way forward, squeezing his bulk between the cart and Fenris and then cheerily slobbering over Fenris’s white-knuckled fist. Well, at least one of them knew how to handle that situation, even if it wasn’t the human one.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m sorry!” The words hurtled from Tybalt’s lips, an apologetic, brief burst of sound. He wrung his hands together, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I didn’t mean- That is- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to ask anything to hurt you. You can leave if you don’t want to stay here now.”

_If you don’t want to be around me any more._

It was ridiculous. Intellectually, he knew that. He knew that the idea had no basis in reality. But his heart, oh his heart. It fled back to friends who suddenly stopped being friends over things he didn’t understand, to people who ignored him, to people who only remembered that he existed when they wanted something.

Yarrow’s head swung between the two of them, whining. There were two people upset now and he could only be at one side at a time. He gave Fenris’s hand one more slobber as an apology before lumbering around the cart. Tybalt was his human. Tybalt came first.

“It’s okay,” Fenris said.

If Tybalt’s words had been a shockwave, Fenris’s were a punch of air, ragged on the edges. Bitten back sorrow and pain were tightly wound up at the core of the words.

“Or we can talk about something else. We can do that. There are lots of things to talk about,” Tybalt rambled on.

“Tybalt!” Fenris snapped. Tybalt had heard his name snapped out before, but never as if there was another name hiding underneath it like a drowned ghost.

Tybalt startled, mouth slamming shut. He sucked his breath in and forced himself still. His fingers twisted together to the point of physical pain. His feet twisted, angling until the two pointed inward and he took a deep, as quiet as possible breath.

“I apologize,” Fenris said, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes. “There is no need for you to be sorry and I am not angry. You could not have known.” He paused, squaring his shoulders and straightening his back as if he was dragging himself out of some dark place in his head. “I would rather we talk of something else.”

Tybalt swallowed, adam’s apple nervously bobbing up and down.

Fenris wasn’t leaving then, good. Tybalt could make this right. He could get Fenris to smile again and distract him from whatever had chased those shadows across Fenris’s face.

“Basil!” Tybalt blurted out.

He said that he could think of a new topic, not that he could do it calmly 

Fenris stared at him. “Basil?”

“Yes!” Tybalt nodded and blindly groped for one of the plants that he knew were just to his right. His fingers closed around the little black container and shoved it in Fenris’s face.

If Tybalt could talk about anything, he could talk about plants.

And not siblings. For the time being, siblings were off the table. He would temporarily remove that page from his mental dictionary.

“Basil isn’t that difficult to take care of. I bet you could do as long as you keep the thumb of death away away from it.” Tybalt hazarded a look at Fenris’s face, hoping to see a faint shred of a smile come back, but Fenris’s brows were still furrowed down into a frown and his lips were a thin line. Tybalt’s shoulders slumped a little, but rallied. No giving up. Nope. He hadn’t given up back when he was six when everyone said that no, he wasn’t a dragon and no, he couldn’t fly. Sure, he’d ended up in the hospital with a broken leg and a concussion, but he had definitely flown from the roof of the primary school’s bicycle shed. For about two seconds. Until he’d landed and, well, he still maintained that it had all gone wrong with the landing.

Tybalt was very certain that persisting here wouldn’t end up with him in the hospital.

He hoped not.

Anders would be insufferable if it did.

“I mean, you don’t even have to water it every day. You just gotta make sure the soil keeps a little moist.”“And fertilizer. I can give you some of the stuff I have at home and if you put it in a sunny window, it’ll be a happy little plant.” Tybalt launched into lecture mode even as he put the plant in the cart. If he couldn’t get Fenris to take it, Tybalt would just keep it himself. There was no such thing as too many fresh basil plants. No matter what Varric said. 

Fenris reached out, picking the basil out of the cart again. His shirt sleeve rode up a little, exposing more of the odd white markings. Tattoos, Tybalt figured, though he couldn’t remember seeing a lot of white tattoo work. Then again, he didn’t see a lot of tattooed people in general. He couldn’t quite figure out what the raised lines below the tattoos were, though. Scars, maybe?

“That easy?” Fenris asked, holding the plant up to eyes level and giving it a considering look.

Tybalt shrugged.

“Pretty much. Well, if your roommate doesn’t kill it, you might end up having to re-pot it. They can grow a lot.”

Fenris hummed, for a second, then put the plant right back in the exact spot he’d taken it out of the cart from.

“I shall keep it in my room,” he decided. “Isabela knows better than to go in there.”

Tybalt smiled, cheeks aching with it and a warm glow lighting up deep within his chest. He had a little bit more of a bounce to his step.

Fenris had listened! He had actually listened instead of zoning out.

“Oh! Summer’s coming up.” Tybalt zipped to another topic.

“Yes?”

“Well, that means bugs, right? And it’s hilarious to watch Yarrow go after bugs, in a kind of near heart attack-y way because if he goes on a dash through my apartment, nothing stays upright. Wait, where was I going with this? Oh! Yes. Bugs. And mosquitoes. Hate those. We should get you some lemon balm. It’s kinda like mint and if that mint plant you bought survived and you keep that basil one in your room and you add a lemon balm, I promise a mosquito will think twice before sneaking in to feast on your blood.” Tybalt paused for a second and frowned. “Do mosquitoes think, actually? Or is it just all instinct? I don’t know which one I’d prefer, to be honest. Either they’re evil little master minds or buzzing annoyance machines.”

There had to be a reason that those pests on wings existed, but Tybalt couldn’t quite figure out why.

It bugged him to no end. Heh. _Bugged_.

“Is there something funny?” Fenris asked, breaking into Tybalt’s thoughts.

Tybalt’s head snapped up, blinking owlishly. “What?”

“You were smiling.”

“Oh. Well… I… uh… I was was just thinking how much it bugs me that I don’t know why mosquitoes exist.” Tybalt scrunched his nose. “It sounded funnier in my head.”

Whatever he had said chased some of the dark shadows from Fenris’s eyes and the line his lips had been set in became less rigid. Surely couldn’t have been the pun that should have landed him in pun jail. Tybalt counted that all as a win and tried not to focus on the way Fenris’s shoulders were still drawn up and tense, of the way his hands twitched by his side.

Part of him wanted to ask or offer help if he could, but every time he wanted to, he couldn’t help but think back to the busride. Those were answers to volunteer and not to demand. Maybe… maybe the reason Fenris got it was because he knew it more intimately than most people around Tybalt.

“There are some more plants I wanna get, but after that we could leave.”

“And that fertilizer you mentioned?” Fenris asked.

Tybalt hesitated for a moment before answering. “They sell good stuff here, but I get mine from another place. It’s better if you wanna eat the plants you grow. If you- if you still feel like coming back with me, I can give you some that should last you a month and the address of where I get it.”

Tybalt much preferred to get everything in one place. It meant less trips, less venturing out into places that were too sharp and loud and unexpected, but in certain instances sacrifices had to be made and as much as he loved the plant selection in this nursery, there was a little mom and pop store where they had a far superior brand.

Anything for happy plants.

Fenris eyed Tybalt, then nodded. “I believe that I would like that.”

Tybalt’s heart felt as if just did a cartwheel in his chest, bouncing from his ribs until it settled back into place. He released the cart for a second, bringing his hands up in an excited flapping, before he remembered that he was out in public and people tended to look and judge and whisper, or make assumptions about him.

He didn’t have the energy for that.

Tybalt ducked his head, eyes studiously fixed on the plants, his hands snapped back down to the grips. Might as well let the cat out of the bag now and hope that Fenris wouldn’t look at him differently once he knew.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m autistic. It’s… uhm… It’s a thing I do when I get excited.”

“Oh.” Fenris was quiet for a few moments, but then spoke up again. “There is no need to apologize for that.”

People always said that, but did they really mean it? The words were nice and all, but Tybalt knew reality. He hummed a vague affirmative and pushed the cart forward. He only got a few feet before Fenris caught him by the arm and stopped him.

“I mean it,” he said, voice low and determined. “I enjoy your presence because you are who you are.”

Tybalt felt heat radiate out from where Fenris touched his arm. This was usually the moment where he pulled away, where he clenched his jaws and tried to keep from rubbing his skin to stop it from crawling and squirming. It just felt hot now. Like the sun on a bright August afternoon. Fenris held on, in that moment, exactly tight enough for the pressure to be there and real instead of floaty and distant. It felt as if Fenris’s hand wanted to be there without wanting to hold him down or press him into shapes he was never meant for.

Fenris pulled his hand back in a hasty, jerky movement, halting half way through with just a slightest shift back towards Tybalt’s arm as if Fenris wanted to touch him again, but then pulled back entirely with his arms dangling awkwardly along his body.

For a fleeting moment, Tybalt wanted to grab Fenris’s hand again and hold on. That, he imagined, would be awkward and could potentially cut whatever was forming between them short. If he were any other person, someone more certain of themselves, more confident, he might have asked. As it was, he had no idea how to even start on the subject with Fenris. Maybe he could ask Anders for advice. He’d managed to work things out with his boyfriend, and they had only known each other online with an ocean between them. If Anders could get that to work. Tybalt should at least stand some small chance with someone he could see face to face, someone who was buying plants per Tybalt’s advice.

Unless he was just doing this to be nice.

Oh shut up brain, he chastised himself. People didn’t sacrifice valuable free time to go look at plants with someone they didn’t like even a little bit. Even if he wanted to doubt himself, past experiences had at least proved that much.

Tybalt glanced at Fenris, watched him reach out to touch the small, white petals of a chamomile flower. Fenris’s fingers, Tybalt noted, looked slender and pointy. His nails were cut blunt and short, with a small line of dirt embedded under the white edge. There were scars, Tybalt noticed, on Fenris’s knuckles.

“That’s chamomile, German chamomile by the looks of it I think,” Tybalt said. “I have one plant in a bot on my balcony. If I ever move somewhere with a garden, I’ll plant so many of those. My dad always had them growing in our vegetable patch. They kept most of the bugs away.”

“That sounds useful. Is your father the one who got you interested in gardening?” Fenris asked, lifting what was probably the saddest little chamomile plant of the display up and putting it in the cart.

“Yeah. Dad didn’t like lawns. He wanted plants we could use and I can’t even remember when I started helping him. I stopped for a while after he-” Tybalt’s voice shuddered to a stop. Even after all these years, the ache was raw enough to push a big stone of grief and loss back up into his throat. The edges weren’t quite as sharp as the first few years, but it still burned. He swallowed, closed his eyes for a second.

This shopping trip was just full of bringing issues to the surface that shouldn’t be touched on first maybe-slightly-possibly-but-probably-not dates, wasn’t it? Tybalt was just that magical.

Okay. He was fine. This was all good. Moving on to the next subject thank you.

“Anyway, I started it up again, but my place doesn’t have much in the way of a garden so the balcony and my rooms are steadily being overtaken by more and more plants. Anders likes to complain that he won’t have a couch to sit on one day in the near future.”

“Anders?” There was something To Fenris’s voice there that Tybalt couldn’t quite place, as if a tense little thread had been sewn through the letters and pulled a little too tightly.

Odd.

“He’s my neighbour. Kind of a stray emergency room doctor that I fed this one time and now he keeps coming back. He’s a cat person. I’m pretty sure he’s spent enough time with them that they have begun to teach him their ways. I fully expect to catch him licking himself one of these days.” And sadly, Tybalt wasn’t even certain if he was joking about that.

He reached over to pick two final plants from the displays, nestling them snuggly between their new friends. Little leafy green plant-y friends.

“As long as he keeps his trousers on when he does start to lick himself,” Fenris replied and Tybalt nearly dropped the thyme.

“What?!” Tybalt squeaked, staring at Fenris with wide, shocked eyes. Had Fenris just said- Yes. Yes he had. And he was grinning too, a small, wicked grin with a squint to his eyes.

Fenris quickly turned his face to a look of utmost and complete ‘No I would never say that’ innocence, blinking at Tybalt with eyes that were so big and green that as far as Tybalt was concerned they should be illegal. This was unfair! How was he supposed to stand a chance against that?

“You,” Tybalt settled for a half hearted grumble, “are wicked.”

Fenris grinned, very briefly.

“And we need to get to the cash register before you actually manage to make me drop my poor plants. Or cause a tragic shopping cart accident. Keep on his trousers. Hn.” He tried to be stern, but Tybalt couldn’t keep the twist of a smile under control.


	8. Chapter 8

It was a small miracle in and of its own that they managed to survived the bus and get the plethora of plants Tybalt had gathered through the journey with only a few bruised leaves and snapped stems. Tybalt still wasn’t certain how he’d managed to leave with quite so many new additions to his already numerous collection. He’d only intended to get a few!

Then again, didn’t he wonder about that nearly every time that he went to the plant nursery?

One day, he would learn his lesson. This had not been his day, as was made abundantly clear with Fenris standing behind him, holding one box with plants while Tybalt precariously balanced another on one arm,fiddling with his keys to try and get that blasted door open. Tybalt finally heard the lock click and, with a victorious grin on his face, kicked the door open.

Only to be pushed aside by Yarrow, who immediately dashed in and made a bee-line for his bowl. Clearly, the poor beast was starving, what with the way he stuffed his face into the kibble. Tybalt could hear the dog food crunch between Yarrow’s teeth.

“Glutton!” Tybalt called after the dog.

He carried the box to the dining table and put it down with a relieved sigh and shook his arm out. Oh, that had not been the most comfortable few minutes of his life.

Fenris put his burden down a lot more gently than Tybalt.

“What now?” Fenris asked, looking around at the apartment with the windowsills long taken over by plants, the various side tables, corners and the little flat containers where seedlings were starting to uncurl their first leaves.

Well, Tybalt figured, at least Fenris wasn’t stammering out excuses and backing out the door yet.

“I did say I have a lot of plants,” Tybalt pointed out.

“Yes,” Fenris said, scratching the back of his head. “I had not imagined this many.”

Tybalt wasn’t quite certain if there was any judgment in those few words or just genuine surprise at the vast collection of flora Tybalt had managed to accumulate in such limited space. Subtitles would come in handy right about then.

Fenris shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stuffed his hands in his pockets. He hadn’t moved to leave yet, something Tybalt could only approve of. Every second of Fenris time was valuable. The longer Fenris remained-

Oh. Wait. Right. He had to be a good host. Fenris hadn’t yet crossed into the territory where he had been over often enough to just help himself to Tybalt’s fridge. Unlike some people who would remain unnamed but happened to live right across the hall.

“Do you want anything to drink? I have orange juice and coffee and tea and-”

“Water would be fine.”

“-soda and this bright neon blue stuff that Anders insists won’t turn us into sixteen-eyed-mutants but I’m not…” Tybalt faded to a stop as he realized that Fenris had already answered. “Water?”

He could do water. He had plenty of water, as much as anyone could want to drink and then some. Tybalt trundled off to the cabinet and retrieved two large glasses. Tybalt passed Fenris on his way back to the faucet and felt warmth radiating from him when they stood side by side for a moment. Tybalt wasn’t certain if it was real or imagined, but either way, it made him linger for a second longer than usually he would have before resuming his way to the faucet.

“Thank you for coming with me,” Tybalt said as he filled the glasses. “I had a good time at the nursery with you.”

“I as well,” Fenris said. His voice dipped low and warm with a rumble buried underneath.

Okay Tybalt. This was it. He could do it. He could absolutely do this. If Aveline could manage to successfully propose — granted, she’d only managed that after The Incident at the petting zoo and it had involved everyone’s help to get her back on track — he could do this and just edge himself closer and closer to finding out if there was dating potential here or friends potential.

Or maybe Fenris considered this a date already.

“Maybe we could do something again?” He rushed the words out as if he blurted out a tangle of syllables rather than a sentence. Part of Tybalt was happily surprised that the syllables had at least come out in the intended order, even if they had done so a bit messily.

He turned around very slowly, full glasses of water in his hand, while listening for Fenris’s response. Tybalt couldn’t even get himself to look in Fenris’s direction right then. His eyes were firmly fixated on the floor.

Oh man, he really needed to vacuum.

Why wasn’t Fenris answering? He should have answered by now, shouldn’t he? How much time had passed? Time had this funny thing of slowing to what felt like a near stop whenever Tybalt was waiting for something. The more nervous he was, the slower it seemed to go. A few years ago, Tybalt had suggested the theory of _Time is Fickle and Sadistic Relativity_ to Bethany over a bowl of cream cheese frosting.

“I mean, we don’t have to go and buy more plants. We can go do something that you like!” There had to be something that Fenris liked. Oh crap. Tybalt had no idea what Fenris liked. Did this make him a terrible friend? He should have asked sooner. He should have-

“I would like that,” Fenris said.

Fenris, Tybalt noted, had a way of cutting into Tybalt’s rambling, anxious thought patterns. Was he doing it on purpose or was it just some weird kind of luck working its magic?

Either way, he’d said yes! Tybalt stamped down on the impulse to do a little victory dance. Instead, he put one of the glassed of water down in front of Fenris and sipped from the one he’d kept for himself. See? He was getting the hang of this. Maybe one day, people might even start calling him smooth. Of course, that day would coincide with pigs flying and cows dancing on ice, so that would take the headlines away from him, but he was okay with that.

He was perfectly willing to give his fifteen minutes of fame to the pigs and cows in question.

Fenris scraped his throat, pulling Tybalt out of the landscapes of various farm animals in tutus and make-shift wings. Oh crap. Fenris had said something.

Tybalt could _feel_ the embarrassed blush creeping up his neck.

“I… ah… I’m sorry. I didn’t- My mind wandered off and I didn’t hear what you were saying.” He tried to hide his face behind the glass and had another gulp of water.

Fenris arched an eyebrow.

“Must have been an interesting place.”

Tybalt couldn’t help it. He snorted and only barely managed to slap his hand over his mouth to keep himself from spitting out his water. He swallowed and coughed. “Sorry! I didn’t- yes. My mind is interesting, well, no, that sounds like bragging, doesn’t it? It’s weird. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a weird place. I was thinking about pigs with wings tacking on their backs. And cows dancing the swan lake and- I really should stop talking before you come to your senses and run out the door. Not that I would blame you if you did. I’d just really like it if you stayed? Okay, Shutting up now. This is me. Shutting up.”

Stop with the words Tybalt. Good. Have a cookie later.

A distinct, chuckle-like sound came from Tybalt’s left, closer than he had expected Fenris to be. Tybalt’s head snapped up and he squinted at Fenris. Was Fenris making fun of him or had the mental image turned out to be infectious enough to sneak into Fenris head? The latter, Tybalt decided, probably the latter, and the Gremlin of Doubt could just shut up and sneak off into whatever shady corner of Tybalt’s mind was the farthest away from his thought processes. Or maybe just pick an ear and saunter on out and away for ever and ever.

“You would not mind?” Fenris asked.

“Not even a little bit! I mean, unless you have anything else to do-” What was he doing? Why was Tybalt coming up with reasons for Fenris to leave?

“My time-” Fenris’s voice dipped a little lower, a little softer, and he leaned a smidge closer to Tybalt “-is yours for today.”

Tybalt slammed his mouth shut before anything that could be identified as a squeak escaped. He did not squeak. He was a grown man. Adults did not squeak because of someone else’s voice. Or maybe they did and no one had ever thought to pass him that memo. Tybalt’s mouth felt as if he’d been to the dentist’s: numb and with the distinct aftertaste of cotton balls. Swallowing did nothing to banish the parched sensation in his mouth. A sip from his nearly empty glass offered no relief either.

He should do something, say something in return, he could feel it but the second he reached for that certainty, it disappeared. He had the distinct idea, though, that blurting out another plant growing fact was definitely not the right way to go about this. Fenris was really close, Tybalt realized. Close enough that he could reach out and touch.

Which was, naturally, when his front door opened and a pile of grocery bag with legs under and a tuft of dishevel blond hair above them ambled into his apartment.

“Hey, I heard you in the hall so I figure that I’d bring the gift of groceries so I may enjoy your foo-” Anders stopped and openly stared at Fenris, then turned to look at Tybalt. “That Fenris?”

Tybalt estimated that it would probably be bad form to make a run for it. Was there anything he could say that would make it seem as if he hadn’t talked about Fenris, at length, with his friends? Or, conversely, throw something at Anders for having the absolute worst timing. Ever.

No, those would both, probably, be bad. So very, very bad. Besides, he had thrown things at Anders before and either Tybalt’s aim was terrible, or Anders’s reflexes too quick.

Additionally, Aveline really didn’t like being hit by a stray stick of butter.

“Yes,” Tybalt ended up saying. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fenris, this is Anders. Anders, Fenris.”

“Great, wonderful, Tybalt would you help me? One of the bags is making a leap for freedom and I’m pretty sure it’s the one with the vinegar in it,” Anders said while trying to keep a desperate hold on everything, but slowly losing the battle.

Tybalt dashed forward to grab the bottom of the bag before it succeeded in its quest of leaping to freedom and creating an unholy mess on the floor.

“I got it, I got it, you can let go. Okay. Just put the rest of the bags on the kitchen counter and sit down somewhere. Away. Where you can’t help me.” Tybalt directed Anders with a jerk of his head to the kitchen counter. He wasn’t even certain why he said it, why he always said it, actually. It had just become part of the ritual, he supposed.

Anders, once freed from his burden, trudged to a safe distance which naturally happened to be near Fenris.

Tybalt observed this with the healthy suspicion of a man who knew his friends and and their skill at causing trouble. Tybalt looked at Fenris, whose face had lost the smile. Fenris didn’t look as if he knew what to make of Anders. That was okay, sometimes Tybalt didn’t know what to make of Anders. Usually when his neighbour came stumbling in with big bags under his eyes and the look of someone whose only light for the past several days had been his computer screen, demanding coffee the way an old fashioned zombie might clamor for brains.

Shrugging, Tybalt turned back to the groceries. Anders and Fenris could sort themselves out. He had groceries to unpack and put away according to the Tybalt Hawke System: all neatly lined up, ordered by type, colour and then size. It was specific and it took time, but Tybalt preferred that to the unease feeling in his stomach knowing that something in his cupboards was out of order.

“Soooo. You’re Fenris,” Anders said.

Fenris inclined his head. “I am, as was said. You are the neighbour?”

“One of ‘m, at least.” Anders looked from Fenris to Tybalt’s back and at Fenris again. “Had a good time at the plant store thing?”

Fenris hummed an agreement. “It was very enjoyable.”

Tybalt was, for a moment, glad that he had his face to the cupboards so no one could see the foolish grin his face had just adopted as a new expression. By the way he felt, he anticipated that it would scare Anders and Fenris right out of his apartment.

“You got some plants too, didn’t you? When Hawke gets all enthusiastic about stuff, it’s really, really hard not to get swept up in stuff. He managed to get me to buy plants!”

“I suggested that you buy mint to make your cats happy.” Tybalt whirled around, packet of uncooked pasta in his hand, to correct Anders. “And you killed the plant.”

“I did no such thing!”

“You poured coffee on it! That is not responsible plant owner behaviour.” Tybalt jabbed the spaghetti in Fenris’s direction. “Don’t give your plants coffee. It’s bad for them.”

“And Tybalt will lecture you about it and never let you live it down,” Anders helpfully tagged on.

For a moment, Fenris stared at the spaghetti that Tybalt was still holding out as if it were a short, edible sword.

Tybalt could almost hear Fenris wonder how he’d ended up in this situation.

“I…” Fenris scraped his throat. “I shall endeavor to ensure my plants live a caffeine free existence.”

“Good.” Tybalt gave one more warning shake with the spaghetti before turning around and putting it in the pasta corner of the middle shelf. Right there with the farfalle and the rigatoni. Perfect. “That would just be plant cruelty and I would be forced to doom you to a life without plants.”

“He’s not joking either,” Anders said. “He’s been given me Plastic Plants of Shame ever since.”

“Those are the only ones who will last with you. And you don’t even dust them! They look like a horrible lab experiment between lilies and dust bunnies gone wrong.” Tybalt gathered the vegetables, fish and meat that needed to be in the fridge. “Anders, I’m making my tomato rice tonight. You want some?”

“Is there any universe where I would say no?” Anders asked.

Tybalt shrugged. “The one where you finally start cooking for yourself?”

“That universe is an outlier and should not be counted.” Anders huffed.

“Right.” Tybalt straightened and looked at Fenris. Should he offer dinner to Fenris too or would that be creepy and clingy? Oh hell. He’d been there through Tybalt bantering with Anders, offering dinner wouldn’t be weirder than that. People went out to dinner for dates all the time. Except they weren’t going out to dinner and having his friend there with him was distinctly non-date-like. “Do you wanna stay for dinner too?”

“He likes to feed people,” Anders said.

“Some people,” Tybalt said, giving Anders a pointed look, “would be living on pizza otherwise. But yeah, uhm… Fenris. I can cook for three if you wanna hang out some more and if you don’t have anything better to do with your time.”

Fenris was quiet for a few long, long moments. He didn’t even move. “I can think of nothing better.”

Tybalt studiously ignored Anders giving him the least subtle thumbs up in the history of the gesture.

“Alright, dinner for three.” Unplanned, but he could roll with that. He still had time until dinner. He could calculate how he would have to change the amounts in the recipe and everything would be fine.

“Sooooo, Fenris,” Anders drawled. “How are you at Mario Kart?”

Correction: everything would not be fine.


	9. Chapter 9

Tybalt couldn’t stand to watch it and yet he couldn’t look away. This had to be that train wreck effect people people described. Oh, he knew that this was going to end horribly. Why was he even allowing this? Mario Kart should not be played with strangers, when even friends couldn’t manage to play without threats of bloodshed and painful vengeance.

And yet, there they were, Anders starting up the console and Fenris inspecting the white, plastic wheel as if he expected it to start dancing the tango.

This, Tybalt decided, was going to be a digital massacre and he refused to be a part of it. Nope. Not happening. That game was too loud, too fast and just all around too much for him to deal with after the morning’s shopping trip. He would live a happy, fulfilled life if today was not the day where Fenris saw him have a meltdown. There would be other days for that. Days far, far off in the future.

The odds of Fenris never seeing it, whether he stuck around as a friend or more, were too slim for Tybalt to hope for.

“I steer by turning this?” Fenris asked.

An unholy grin appeared on Anders’s face.

“Anders, be nice,” Tybalt warned.

“I am nice! I am the nicest, just ask my patients!” Anders objected, full of wounded innocence.

Tybalt narrowed his eyes at Anders. “Your patients have never been tossed off of Rainbow Road by you.”

He disliked that blasted track on a good day. When Anders decided that he’d rather be a pain and just toss as many people off of the course as he could instead of trying to win, Tybalt’s dislike for it turned into white hot, seething hatred. Whoever had designed it was a horrible person who should feel bad and consider their choices in life.

A lot.

Fenris looked between the two of them. His eyebrows made a valiant effort to crawl up his forehead to go and say hello to his hairline.

“Fine, fine, cross my heart and hope to die, I won’t touch Rainbow Road today.” Anders held up his hand as if he were swearing an oath. “Satisfied?”

Tybalt wasn’t. This was an awful idea. Fenris obviously wasn’t experienced at playing computer games, if the way he was looking at the controller and poking the buttons was any indication. Anders had a competitive streak when it came to gaming. The odds of this ending poorly vastly outweighed anything else.

Yet, Tybalt couldn’t think of a way to politely express his concerns.

He was probably overreacting, he reasoned. Surely Anders would tone his usual behavior during game night down a little. Right?

“Okay…” Tybalt couldn’t banish all the doubt from his voice. “I’m just going to go and take care of my plants, then.” He’d be close by enough to hear if Anders decided to pull a prank on Fenris and intervene, he hoped, but he also needed just a little time to himself. He back out of the room just as the sound of the game chimed to life.

Honestly, what was the worst that could happen? The controllers didn’t have wires, so they wouldn’t be able to repeat the incident between Tybalt and Carver ten years ago.

Tybalt set to gathering the herbs he had bought for himself, carrying them with him through the living room and to the balcony. Anders was just explaining the different characters to Fenris and what the difference between each was. Tybalt had the distinct impression that Anders had suddenly developed a completely new and unusual understanding of the game mechanics.

“Pick Yoshi,” Tybalt advised as he passed. “The green dino looking thing.”

“Thank you.” Fenris leaned towards the screen a little more. He was seated on the very edge of the couch while Anders had forgone all propriety and simply sat down on the floor. Neither of them actually looked up to acknowledge Tybalt.

At least he had Yarrow, who raised his head and briefly looked up to where his human was going. Noting the Planty Things in Tybalt’s arms, Yarrow huffed and laid his head down between his paws again. He had learned a long time ago that there would be no , long, optimal pettings if his human was busy playing in the dirt.

Tybalt had to put his burden down for a moment to unlock the balcony door. As he stepped out, he caught a glance of the track Anders, had selected. At least it was one of the easier ones. Tybalt stepped out, right into the middle of a small concrete slab jutting out from the building with an old metal railing. Pots already teeming with herbs and veggies lined the sides, dangled from the railing and resting on supports jutting out from the wall.

He had just started lining his new plants up in order that he wanted to re-pot them when he heard a yelp from the living room. That sounded like Anders. He poked his head back inside.

“I thought you said you’d never played this game!” Anders cried out in indignation.

“I have said no such thing,” Fenris replied, calm and quiet with a little undercurrent of smug.

“You implied it a whole lot, then!”

Fenris snorted. “What your mind latches onto is not my doing.”

For a moment, all Tybalt heard was Anders’s sputtering before he growled.

“Fine then!” Anders snarled. “It’s on!”

Oh. Oh no. Those were fighting words. Those were teenage Tybalt and Carter racing on their old console words. Those were the words that usually ended nowhere good. In fact, Tybalt thought while touching his left eyebrow and the little scar there, those were words that had on one occasion ended up with someone getting stitches.

Carver had always had great aim and those controllers were hard, okay.

Tybalt abandoned his plants and dashed back into the room. Well, he tried, but his foot caught on the doorstep and instead of heroic dash, he ended with a flaily stagger. He didn’t know what he expected — mayhem probably and perhaps a little bloodshed though hopefully kept to a minimum because they were all adults — but it wasn’t this.

Anders was leaning into the curves of the track as if he were Peach while occasionally taking a second to reach back to try and swat at Fenris while Fenris sat in arched tension at the very edge of the couch, dodging Anders’s attempts at cheating. 

Well, at least no one was bleeding. He could probably count that as a win.

“You will have to try harder,” Fenris said, jerking to the side as his racer dodged around a bob-omb.

“Careful what you wish for!” Anders spat the words through gritted teeth and shot off a lightning bolt. “Hah! Take that!”

Tybalt very, very quietly took out his phone, aimed it at the two men exchanging snipes and sarcastic insults while constantly trying to overtake one another on the track. Neither Anders nor Fenris heard the little ding when he switched his camera on to record. He was fairly certain that this would come in handy some day in the future if he was feeling down about something.

Yarrow, meanwhile, picked himself up from the floor and, with a long suffering doggy sigh, trotted to Tybalt’s bedroom in search of a place to take a peaceful nap. _Humans_.

“You two are hopeless,” Tybalt dryly informed them.

“I’m beating him!” Anders argued back, not taking his eyes from the TV.

“No you’re not,” Tybalt answered.

Fenris hummed an agreement. “Assuredly not.”

“Because the computer is beating you both.” Tybalt grinned at Anders’s indignant yelp and Fenris’s annoyed grunt. Once more confident that no murder or physical attacks would happen, and that no one was going to require stitches in the near future, Tybalt retreated back to the balcony. He replayed the short clip once, grinning to himself.

“Eat my shield!” Anders yelled, loud enough that Tybalt was certain that Wynne, the old lady living on the ground floor of the building, must have heard it.

“Learn to steer first,” Fenris snapped back.

“I will steer you right off the track!”

“I need to see that before I will believe it.”

Tybalt pinched the bridge of his nose. This… this was going to be interesting, to say the least.

He pushed the balcony door shut behind him, muffling the sound of Fenris and Anders’s argument. As long as they weren’t actively trying to kill each other in real life, as opposed to in a videogame, he really wasn’t going to complain. He had plants to tend to and a dinner to cook for the three of them.

“Alright then,” Tybalt said, brushing his hands against his trousers. “Let’s get the lot of you somewhere where you will feel happier, shall we?”

He sat down on the balcony and began gently pulling the plants out of their plastic encasing. He provided them each with a new home in a row of planters. Tybalt dug his fingers into the rich, dark soil. He had always hated playing in the sandbox, the way the pale, yellow sand stuck to his skin like sanding paper. This was different. There was a richness and life in the soil; the dirt was softer.

It was easy for Tybalt to lose track of time like that, happily puttering about among his plants, checking their leaves, making certain that no pests were causing damage and they all had enough water. However long it took him, however, didn’t seem to matter much. Anders and Fenris were still trying to one-up each other in Mario Kart.

Man, and people said that Tybalt got obsessed with things.

Not even the scent of cooking dinner seemed to distract them from the competition. Tybalt wasn’t certain whether that meant that they were getting along or if the insults and snipes would be a part of any potential future interaction.

God, he hoped not.

“All right guys,” he called, piling the plates full with food. “Either you quit the game on your own, or I’m unplugging you.”

Wait.

Had he just…

Yes. Yes he had. Great. He had turned into his mother. Not that he didn’t love his mother. He just didn’t really want to be her.

He blamed Anders for this. And Fenris. Actually, the combination of the two of them.

The sounds from the game stopped, followed by two sets of footsteps coming from the living room. Anders dragged his feet, as always, while Fenris was almost inaudible. Anders shuffled to his usual spot at the small dining room table. Fenris, however looked at the seats and carefully with a practiced casual air moved a plate to be in front of the chair that allowed him a clear line of sight at the door and a view of most of the apartment. Tybalt frowned, looked at Anders to see if he could explain it but all Anders gave him was a shrug.

No idea.

Tybalt itched to find out, to ask, even opened his mouth but remembered at the very last moment that Fenris hadn’t pried into Tybalt’s personal life. The least Tybalt could do was return the favour.

“So. Who won?” Tybalt asked.

Anders grumbled something. Fenris twirled his fork between his fingers.

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak fork twirling or grumbly-speak.”

“It was a tie,” Anders clarified with a huff. “I will get you.” He poked his fork in Fenris’s direction.

“And my little dog too, I presume?” Fenris threw back at him, not looking up but instead keeping an eye on the other two plates.

Tybalt snorted and instead of commenting, decided to dig into his meal. The second he did, Fenris followed his example.

“Got all your plants nice and settled in?” Anders asked between bites.

“Yep,” Tybalt answered, turning to Fenris. “Sorry for not staying in the room. I… eh… I needed a moment to myself.”

“I would have gone if you had asked me to.” Fenris lowered his fork, eyes sliding to the door.

“No! I mean- That is to say-” It would probably be bad form to slam his forehead into the table. “I wanted you to stay. I like your company. Sometimes I just need a little bit of space to make my head calm again.”

Fenris tilted his head, thinking for a moment before a smile appeared on his face and he leaned ever so slightly towards Tybalt. “I appreciate being in your company.”

That was… Was Fenris hitting on him? Was this Fenris trying to be flirty? If it was, Tybalt was all for it. He couldn’t keep the giddy smile from his face and ducked his head. He shifted in his seat and rolled his fork between his fingers. Raising his head again got him a look at the ear to ear grin on Anders’s face, not to mention a cheeky wink.

Worst. Wingman. Ever.

“I’m sorry I didn’t show you how to best re-pot your plants.” Tybalt plunged into a new topic and hoped against all hopes that Fenris, through some small miracle, hadn’t seen Anders being overly supportive. “I can… ehm… I can loan you some of my books to help you.”

Fenris stiffened. The hold on his form tightened just a little before he relaxed again, if Tybalt could call it that much. It looked as if Fenris forced it, like Tybalt did when something was grating on his nerves but he couldn’t afford to give in.

“That won’t be necessary,” he answered. His shoulders were still drawn up, eyes fixed on the door

“It won’t be a problem. I have plenty of books I-” Oh. That was not what Fenris had meant. “Fenris?”

“I-” Fenris hesitated, then looked at Anders.

The room was quiet, for a moment, before Anders’s chair scraped over the floor.

“I think I need to use the bathroom. Yep. Too much water drinking. And all that stuff. Babbling brooks. Waterfalls.” Strike worst wingman ever. Worst actor ever applied more in this instance.

Even Tybalt could tell that Anders didn’t actually need to go.

Fenris only spoke up again once Anders had gone.

“I have no need for your books,” Fenris said and then, more quietly. “I have trouble reading.”

Tybalt blinked at him. “Trouble reading?” he echoed. “But how?”

That might have been the wrong thing to say. Fenris pushed himself up and away. His face reminded Tybalt of those expression cards his therapist used to show him. Frustrated, he thought, no. Something else. Sadness? No, definitely not. Oh! Shame! That was the one. But why was Fenris- Ah. Oh damn it. He really needed to get a better grasp on that thinking the words out before speaking them.

“Fenris, wait, please. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything, honest.” He rushed out the apology, eyes pleading for Fenris to stay. He had no idea what was going through Fenris’s head, but it was his fault and he had to set this right.

Fenris hesitated, freezing in the middle of getting up. He looked at Tybalt, searching his face for something as Tybalt did his best to maintain eye contact. People believed that there was honesty in that, but even though he desperately wanted to show Fenris that he was sincere, his eyes wandered, settling on a spot just over Fenris’s shoulder.

Fenris sat down, elbows on the table. “I… apologize. My reaction was too strong. People have certain prejudices when they discover that.”

Tybalt bit his lip. This was not a moment to pry or to ask about the texts. He reached out, bumping his hand against Fenris’s elbow, then his hand. “Whatever the reason is, I promise, I won’t judge. I know what that’s like.”

Fenris glanced sideways at Tybalt, a humorless grin swept over his face. “Yes, I suppose you do. In a way.”

They had that in common then, at least.

“If you want, I can come over to your place when we both have the time and show you. Or you can call me and I can be your tech support, but then for plants. Heh. Plant support.” Tybalt grinned, a little bit hopeful. Or help him with reading, but that felt presumptive to Tybalt. He didn’t like it when people came up with ideas for him and how he should tackle his autism, so he shouldn’t turn around and do the same to others.

“I would like that.” Fenris answered Tybalt’s grin with a smile of his own.

It was silent in the apartment for a moment, though Tybalt could swear he heard Yarrow’s snoring coming from the bedroom, before a knock broke through the quiet.

“Guys? Can I come out of the bathroom now?” Anders called out in a plaintive question.


	10. Chapter 10

Tybalt had had crushes before. Some of them had faded into whispers of nothing before he had even been able to put a name to them. Some, he had stomped on, crushed under his heels. Nothing could ever come of it. Who would want him? Certainly not them. Some had evaporated as proximity had revealed habits and customs that grated against him. There had been two that had gone somewhere. One when he’d been the angry boy with the dead father. One when he had fallen for a smile and learned that not all kisses would smother the life out of him.

And now there was Fenris.

As much as he wasn’t ready to say it, Tybalt knew it. He could push the feeling away, aside, to forget and turn it into something that would occasionally come creeping back with a faint wisp of regret.

He could.

He didn’t want to.

As he sat, squinting against the sunlight on the park bench, Tybalt realized that he didn’t want to. Perhaps he had known before, but there was a difference between the knowledge that slumbered in his heart and the facts that banged the walls in his brain and shouted every time his thoughts turned in that direction.

He had pulled his beads from his wrist, passing the string through his fingers has he sat, perched on the edge of a park bench, elbows on his knees and hunched forward. His eyes were on Yarrow, who bounced around as if someone had fixed invisible springs to his paws. Now that would be something. Tybalt smiled, imagining Yarrow bouncing over people and bushes and his tail wagging like a little propeller.

The beads clicked quickly, one after another, going around the string and through his fingers. He felt the slight weight of his plastic bag leaning against his leg.

Tybalt knew that he should say something, put what whispered in his heart and screamed in his head into words before he lost his chance. Fenris was smart and quick and handsome. Anyone would be lucky to catch his eye. And why, the doubts and anxiety whispered traitorously at the back of his mind, would Fenris go for him?

He twisted the beads around his fingers, pulling the string tight enough to cut into his skin.

Fenris had flirted with him. Anders had confirmed as much when Tybalt had asked him about it.

Fenris, Tybalt reminded himself, was a perfectly capable adult and if he decided to flirt with Tybalt, then he had to see something worth his time.

Oh god, if Bethany found out about his internal wibbling, she was sure to take the first train back home and go on one of her aggressive ego boost tours. No. Wait. She’d pick Carver up from the base and make her twin help. Tybalt wasn’t certain whether his dignity, however little was left of it, could take that.

He should figure this whole mess out before they came down for their monthly dinner. Tybalt was fairly confident that Carver wouldn’t notice a thing? But Bethany? One foot over the threshold and she would just _smell_ that something was up.

“Hawke.”

The low voice from his left startled Tybalt upright. He almost dropped his beads as his head jerked up to identify the speaker. He didn’t actually need to look. He’d recognize that voice anywhere. His heart skipped a beat as his eyes settled on the white lines inked onto Fenris’s chin.

“You made it!” Tybalt sat up a little straighter and slipped his beads back onto his wrist.

“Of course.” Fenris took his place next to Tybalt, his left knee just shy from touching Tybalt’s right. “You are early.”

The ‘again’ went unsaid.

“I’m always early,” Tybalt pointed out. He had thought that that much would have been obvious by then.

“So you are.” Fenris inclined his head slightly. “One of your many qualities.”

Tybalt’s eyes widened, but before he could even think of anything to say or, for that matter, figure out what Fenris had meant by saying that, the topic changed with Fenris gesturing at Yarrow darting about.

“This is why you wanted to meet here instead of coming to my place?” he asked.

Tybalt nodded. “Yeah. I mean, you got to see Yarrow when he’s at my side and helping me, but I wanted you to see him playing around too.”

Fenris turned his gaze to the grass that stretched out before them and the dogs darting around, some sniffing each other, some sprawled out and rolling over the grass, and then there was Yarrow, engaged in what looked like a tug-o-war over possession of a stick with a small, walking ball of tawny fluffy about the size of Yarrow’s head.

“My brother found him for me,” Tybalt explained. “I’d just started living on my own and… well, it wasn’t going well. I couldn’t keep a steady schedule and he’d heard that dogs could help with that, that some dogs could even help with anxiety attacks. Carver has always been the practical one between the three of us.”

Fenris was quiet, nodding and watching Yarrow rather than Tybalt.

“I don’t know why I’m saying this. It’s just…” Tybalt huffed out a sigh. “Most people treat me differently when they find out I’m autistic. They either think I need to be protected and taken care of like I’m a child or… or… or they think I owe it to them somehow to be ‘normal’, to be more like them instead of me. You don’t do that and I don’t understand?” He hadn’t meant for that to end in a question, but at the same time, he needed an answer to that.

Fenris scraped his throat, turned his gaze down to study the lines inked into his hands.

“When I look at you,” he said, “I see someone who is kinder than this world would like, who loves his friends, family, his dog. I see someone who didn’t call me stupid when you discovered that I cannot read well. I see someone who doesn’t demand answers that I cannot yet give. I admit that I know very little about autism, but that is a part of you, as much as the rest and I could not treat you differently for it.”

It ached. Fenris’s words ached. Tybalt wanted to say something, but couldn’t even figure out what, let alone force the words out past the lump in his throat.

“People have treated me differently over my inability to read. Perhaps I am stupid, but I do not enjoy being treated as such. I would not do the same to you.”

“You’re not stupid.” Tybalt hesitated, for a second, before he took the plunge forward. “Weren’t you ever tested?”

“Tested?” Fenris scoffed. “For what?”

“Dyslexia, for one thing!” There, he’d gone and done it. One of the things he hated beyond measure when people did it to him and now he’d gone around and pried into Fenris.

“I think my teachers would have said something.” Fenris tried to brush the question off.

Tybalt wouldn’t let him.

“Not if you run into teachers who don’t care, who think that autistic is code for spoiled and ill-mannered, who think learning disorders are pretty words to hide lazy and unmotivated. Not if you run into teachers whose classes are so full that it’s easy for a student to slip by unnoticed,” Tybalt argued.

Tybalt dared a glance sideways, but Fenris wasn’t looking at him. Instead, Fenris seemed solely focused on his own hands, curled into tight fists, scarred knuckles white. His jaw clenched shut.

“And what if I am?” Fenris asked, his voice that edge of quiet that fell right before thunder and lightning split the sky open on a muggy summer evening. “What good would knowing do me now?”

“You could- I mean- and then-” He didn’t know. He didn’t know enough about Fenris and his life to have even the slightest idea how that would help him. “Being diagnosed helped me understand. It gave me a name and knowledge, a way to stand up to people who called me stupid. I don’t- just because you have trouble doesn’t mean you’re stupid.”

And personally, Tybalt would like five minutes alone with anyone who had talked that into Fenris’s head.

“It matters not,” Fenris insisted. “Those tests cost money, of which I have precious little.”

He had a point there. Tybalt huffed in frustration. It was easy to forget about money when he had his family to fall back on, but he was starting to get the idea that Fenris didn’t have that either.

“I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Tybalt said.

Fenris didn’t say anything in return, leaving Tybalt to fidget, trying to come up with other ways to promise he wouldn’t pry if Fenris didn’t want him to, but nothing seemed adequate. Tybalt shifted, creating a bit more space between them. His fingers found his beads and soon started to click them together again.

“Perhaps we should go,” Fenris said, after a silence that felt as if it had stretched on into eternity. “If you still wish to help me set up that indoor garden you talked about. I have to work tonight.”

Tybalt nodded and got to his feet, picking the bag next to him up from the bench.

* * *

While Tybalt’s own apartment wasn’t exactly the lap of luxury, Fenris’s building stood in a street where the only sign of green were the weeds growing through the cracks of the dented pavement. Tybalt felt out of place, some kind of tourist, as they climbed the stairs of the building, Yarrow close to his side. Someone had put a full garbage bag out by their door and by the smell of it, it had been there for quite some time. Writing, probably from children given the scrawl and the words, littered the walls. One of the lights flickered on and off in a pattern that had neither rhyme nor reason, the constant buzzing of the light burrowed into Tybalt’s brain like a drill.

The building in its entirety reminded Tybalt a little of where he had grown up, when his mother had still been an outcast from her family. The same worn, tired look of people who tried to make things look nice but had either stopped caring a long time ago — it wouldn’t make a difference anyway — or simply didn’t have the energy to manage. It had been the second option in the Hawke house a lot of the time.

They stopped in front of a door that didn’t look any different from the others with its worn, muddled colour that Tybalt imagined happened if beige and mud had a sordid affair. A few scuffmarks and dents decorated the door.

Fenris’s key clicked in the lock and Tybalt counted the turns. One. Two. Three. Fenris pushed the door and simultaneously pulled the key out. “Apologies for the mess,” he said, holding the door open for Tybalt to enter.

The hall Tybalt stepped into was small and dark. There were no windows, and the doors to the adjoining rooms were closed. When Fenris switched on a light, Tybalt immediately noticed a collection of boots. High heeled boots, most of them thigh high. Yarrow ambled past Tybalt and sniffed at them before moving on to the floor, huffing while he chased down new, unfamiliar scents.

The boots didn’t look like something Fenris would wear. At least, not based on what Tybalt had seen of his wardrobe so far.

“Those are Isabela’s,” Fenris explained, having caught Tybalt looking at the boots. “Her ability to walk in those without breaking her ankles is truly awe-inspiring.”

Tybalt would take his word on that. If the person who wore those things was anything like their choice in shoes, Tybalt was going to be intimidated in advance and save them all some time. He spotted one pair of worn sneakers in a corner. Those were probably Fenris’s.

Fenris moved to open the door to the living room. It was small and crowded with just the two couched and a coffee table. Clothing items, probably both from Fenris and this mysterious Isabela, scattered around. Right. Don’t mind the mess, Fenris had said, so this was Tybalt. Not minding. At all.

“Where are the plants?” Tybalt asked, looking around.

“In my room,” said Fenris. “Safe from the thumb of death.”

Right. Part of Tybalt was starting to get very curious about this roommate. From what little he had seen and heard, she seemed like an interesting person. Some of those boots had looked a little scary though. The heels alone on a number of them looked like they could be convincingly used as a lethal weapon.

“I see.” Tybalt twisted his fingers together, looking around. A pile of art books balanced precariously on the edge of the coffee table. There was a smear of bird poop on the outside of the front window. He smelled faint flowers, artificial enough that it would have given him a headache if it had been heavier.

This was Fenris’s home.

“Do you want anything to drink?” asked Fenris.

Tybalt almost shook his head before remembering protocol. “Yes, please.”

“What can I get you?”

That was always such a difficult question. How could he know if he didn’t know what they had? People usually had tea and coffee, sometimes juice.

“Water,” Tybalt answered. “Please?”

Had Fenris felt this awkward when he’d first come along to Tybalt’s place? He should sit down. Yes. That sounded like a plan. Tybalt edged towards the couch as Fenris retreated to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Carefully, Tybalt pushed what looked like a sweater, if sweaters were meant to be see-through, aside enough to allow him to sit down, putting the plastic bag on the ground next to his feet. A few moments later, Yarrow dropped down on top of Tybalt’s feet, narrowly avoiding crushing the bag and its contents.

Fenris came back carrying two glasses. One held water, the other orange juice. He pushed a magazine on the coffee table to the side and put both glasses down in the now empty space before taking a seat on the other couch. He smiled, then, and Tybalt felt his shoulders relax, his spine became less rigid and he let go of his beads.

Fenris smiled and it was like a ray of rare sunlight warming the room.

Tybalt almost laughed: could he be more cliché? Knowing him? Yes. Yes, absolutely. And that was not a challenge.

“I like your place,” Tybalt said. “It’s lively.”

Fenris nodded. “I shall be certain to pass your words on to Isabela. Most of this is her doing. I did not have much when I came to this city.”

“Oh? Where are you from?”

For a moment, though Fenris was looking at Tybalt, Tybalt had the feeling that Fenris eyes were on something miles away.

“That,” Fenris said, “is a story best kept for another day.”

Oh. Every time Fenris’s past came up, that happened. Fenris either stiffened, like the moment Tybalt had brought up siblings, or just now. Every time, it was harder to keep from being nosy, from wanting to know what had happened. Why Fenris was covering scars with tattoos. Why he never shared stories of his friends, of his childhood. One of these days, Tybalt realized, he wouldn’t be able to stomp down on the impulse.

He’d heard someone say once that relationships were only scary if he saw the other person as competition. Funny that they’d never mentioned whether trying to figure out if it was an option was scary.

But oh, he wanted to have a chance there. With Fenris. He hoped he had one, but reading people was hard and reading Fenris, who kept his past and secrets locked up tight like a dragon would have hoarded gold? Almost impossible.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked before he could even think to reign himself in.

Fenris looked up, big green eyes even wider than usual, brow dipping in confusion. “What do you mean?”

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“You don’t really like plants, do you? I mean-” Tybalt gestured around the room “-not a plant in sight, and that can’t just be because your roommate is the Grim reaper of Plants. But you listen to me when I ramble about it. You went shopping for plants with me and bought some and just… I don’t understand.”

A clocked ticked away seconds in the silence. Five. Six. Seven. Ei-

“Because you like it,” Fenris said, shifting to the very edge of the couch, as close as he could get to Tybalt without getting up.

Tybalt’s eyes met his for a brief second. The intensity Tybalt saw there made his heart flop in his chest and he looked down, focusing on Fenris’s mouth instead.

“You like plants and herbs and vegetables. When you speak of it, you get this- this _glow_ about you.” Fenris’s lips curved into a warm smile, sending another anatomically impossible flop through Tybalt’s chest. “I enjoy seeing that.”

What was he supposed to say to that? Fenris did all this, spent money when he couldn’t possibly have that much, just because he wanted to see Tybalt happy? Oh goodness.

“I… uhm… I…” Tybalt fumbled through words, possible replies, even as he felt his cheeks heat up to the point where someone might just as well have set the room on fire. “I got you something!”

Smooth, Tybalt. So very smooth. He blindly grabbed for the bag and thrust it out into Fenris’s face.

That wasn’t even _close_ to what he would have wanted to say in an ideal world, but this was the real world and now he was stuck with it. Best to soldier on, then.

Fenris took the bag, fishing the contents, a plant in a deep grey earthenware pot, out.

“It’s oregano,” Tybalt rushed to explain. “Actually one of my own. I thought you might like it and it’s not that difficult to take care off and-”

“One of your own? You mean that you grew this one yourself?” asked Fenris.

Tybalt nodded. Was that a bad thing? Gifts were usually the stuff people paid for but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“That is wonderful. Thank you, Hawke. I shall take good care of it.” Fenris put the plant down on the table. The smile on his face had taken a softer, warmer edge to it.

That had gone better than expected. If things kept going this way, perhaps he could take another risk. Perhaps he could ask Fenris out on an actual date, one that did not involve pushing carts and loading up on more herbal plants than Tybalt needed.


	11. Chapter 11

Tybalt spied on Fenris over the edge of his glass of water while gathering all the courage he could muster. He was going to do it. He was. Yes, definitely, and before he got sidetracked by plants and digging in dirt and all that good stuff. Asking Fenris out to dinner should not be this daunting a task. He’d asked Fenris to go shopping for plants and that had gone wonderfully, for crying out loud. Come on now. Was he a man or was he a mouse?

Given the distinct lack of whiskers, cute wiggly ears and a tail — well, the mouse kind at least — all evidence pointed towards him not being one of the squeaky variety.

Tybalt drew a deep, steadying breath, put his glass down on the table and squared his shoulders. Just dinner, that was all. It wouldn’t even have to be at a fancy place. Just somewhere that wasn’t at risk of being closed by the city.

“Fenris?” Tybalt started and faltered for a moment when Fenris focused his attention on Tybalt. “I was wondering if-”

Whatever he had planned to say next was lost to the sound of a door slamming open.

“Forgot my wallet! Oh… My my, Fenris, bringing a someone over?” Within a second, a woman appeared in the door opening to the living room. Dark hair and skin just about as dark as Tybalt’s own, she looked at Tybalt with a teasing smile. Her clothes were cut deep and tight enough that Tybalt felt acutely aware of his need to keep his gaze from wandering, lest he accidentally end up dipping below her shoulders.

She looked like the kind of person who would delight in not ever letting him forget if he made that mistake.

“Awww, look at Fenris, all grown up and getting someone on the couch. You have to clean up after you two are done here.” There was a singsong melody to her voice, all teasing and whispers of things Tybalt dared not think about, but made his cheeks heat up all the same.

Wait.

What had she just said about the couch?

“There is nothing to be done with this couch that will not pale in comparison with what you have put it through,” Fenris countered.

Yes, Tybalt thought, maybe he should not not be sitting on this couch. Probably. And he definitely was not going to think about what Fenris had just implied. Nope. That just made his mind wander to the things _he_ would like to do with Fenris on a couch, preferably the couch back at Tybalt’s place, and that was exactly the direction his mind should not be wandering in. He should not wonder what Fenris would look like all flushed and sweaty and his hair sticking out at odd angles. He definitely shouldn’t consider whether Fenris was loud in bed or not. Those were all very inappropriate thoughts to have, sitting on a couch that had apparently seen its fair share of bodily fluids, and yet there he was. Sitting on that couch. Thinking those thoughts.

“And he blushes!” the woman - Tybalt guessed that this was the fabled Isabela - crowed. “Oh I like him. You should keep him!”

Fenris ducked his head and coughed loudly, repeatedly.

“Are you okay?” Tybalt asked, reaching for his glass of water. “Do you need some water?”

Please don’t need a Heimlich, please don’t. He should have paid better attention during that first aid class at school. Why hadn’t he? Oh. Right. Because practice had involved touching people.

Fenris shook his head and looked at Isabela. Tybalt wasn’t certain, but he thought there was a faint reddening to Fenris’s face. Probably from the coughing, Tybalt told himself.

“Isabela, this is Tybalt Hawke. Hawke, my roommate Isabela.”

Tybalt wasn’t quite certain what the look Fenris was giving Isabela meant. It reminded him a little of the way Aveline would sometimes frown and half glare before slashing the air with her hands when he and Anders came up with a new, brilliant plan. It had taken Tybalt a few years to figure out that she meant her gestures as a stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200, that is a terrible plan sign. That couldn’t be the case, though. Isabela hadn’t said anything yet.

Oh wait. Introductions had been made. That meant he had to do something. Take action. Show initiative. All that wonderful stuff he hadn’t quite figured out all the way.

Tybalt clambered onto his feet, rousing Yarrow out of his sleep, and stuck his hand out to Isabela. “It’s great to finally meet you!”

Great? Or should he had said nice? Or ‘it’s my pleasure’? Why was talking to people this complicated?

Isabela arched her eyebrow, looked at him, then down at his hand and her face stretched into a smile that promised wicked things. “He’s a sweet one, isn’t he? Perhaps a little too sweet.”

Tybalt wasn’t certain whether that was a good thing. He looked at Fenris, trying to find a way to transmit morse codes using only his eyebrows. SOS. Help. Send in the cavalry. Please give instructions. Anything. He would tap dance if that would get him out of this unscathed.

“How sweet he is is none of your business,” Fenris cut in, much to Tybalt’s relief.

Isabela laughed. It was a rich, high sound like expensive crystal glasses, half full with deep, dark wine, clinking together.

“Ohhh, I suppose that that’s more your business, isn’t that so, Tybs?” she purred.

“I’m not- that is- My name isn’t _Tybs_.” That seemed by far the safest thing to focus on. Definitely safer than anything involved in the sweet and the tasting because that made his mind race right back to Fenris and yep. There he was again, wondering how Fenris would look ad if his hair would go fluffy or if strands would stick to his face.

Were those things people generally thought about or was that just him? Or was that a side effect from going through a dry streak that made a drought look like a spot of summery weather?

“Isabela,” Fenris warned.

The dip in his tone, the slow burning rumble in the syllables, snapped Tybalt’s thoughts right back to the present. Not that that was much better. Right.

“Fenris,” Isabela answered, mirroring his tone with a teasing lilt. “Oh fine, be that way. You should really learn to share.” She tssked, wagging her finger at Fenris.

“I’m fine with the not sharing!” Tybalt had aimed to make that come out as decisive and confident and, as such, he was fully set to ignore the distinct squeaky nature of his voice right there, or at least pretend that it was a take charge sort of squeak. Who cares if those didn’t exist? He had invented one, so there!

Fenris’s head snapped around and he stared at Tybalt while Isabela laughed.

Isabela, Tybalt realized, should never ever meet his friends. He would not be able to cope. So, naturally, he made peace with the idea that inevitably, through some sadistic twist of fate, Isabela would meet his friends.

Yarrow took position next to Tybalt, leaning against his human, and sniffed the air. Tybalt raked his fingers through the dog’s fur.

“Oh, you’re a big one, aren’t you?” Isabela’s eyes were fixed on the dog, not quite stepping back but her back was just straight enough, her shoulders drawn up a little, for even Tybalt to see that she wasn’t completely comfortable. Not everyone liked dogs, especially on a first meeting and even more so when they were medium Grizzly sized. It had taken Tybalt some time to understand that. How could anyone not like Yarrow? Yarrow was the best dog! Except strangers didn’t know that.

“This is Yarrow,” he rushed to explain. “He’s just a bit slobbery. That’s the worst he’ll do.”

Isabela gave Yarrow a doubtful look. Her shoulders had relaxed slightly, but she didn’t look all the inclined to take a step closer to Yarrow just yet.

“He better not drool on my boots,” Isabela said, still eying the dog. “Those were expensive.”

“He won’t! He’s more a sneaker than boots and heels thief,” Tybalt promised.

“Yarrow is very well trained,” Fenris tagged on. “And has been bested by puppies the size of his paw.”

Yarrow sat down just in front of Tybalt, tilting his head, tongue lolling out of his mouth. His floppy ears twitched and his tail gave a hopeful thud on the floor. The very epitome of a seriously overgrown puppy who just wanted to be loved by this new person in his life. And possibly treats while he was at it.

“Crap, what kind of dog is he?” Isabela blurted, finally taking a moment to take in the dog’s size. “You sure he’s not some kinda pony or something?”

Tybalt laughed; he couldn’t help it. It was a common response, but the way Isabela had just tossed the words out there without any attempt to keep them in or fit them into a politer shape.

“He’s a bullmastiff,” Tybalt answered. “For the most part, at least. Might be some other genes floating about too but I’m not sure.”

He didn’t care about pedigree. Carver did, though. He’d been so proud, so Tybalt remembered the breed name, looked up all the facts that he could still rattle off at the drop of a hat. He still had no idea how his family had even been able to afford the pup, but Carver had always had his ways and contacts.

“Riiiiight.” Isabela crossed her arms and shifted her weight from left to right, her hip jutting out. Her eyebrows, sharp and defined like art, arched up.

What did that mean? Didn’t she believe what breed Yarrow was? Or didn’t she believe that Yarrow probably had some other bits of breeds floating about in his DNA? Tybalt fidgeted, opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut once he realized that he had no idea what to say.

“Well, I’ll get out of your hair so Fenris can get into it. And other parts.” She looked directly at Fenris, wicked smirk full of sharp edges and a confidence Tybalt rarely saw in people. Perhaps that was how she could so easily say these things, make implications that set Tybalt’s cheeks aflame and make him wonder all over again.

“Please do,” said Fenris, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Isabela cackled. She looked almost as if she had forgotten about Yarrow, but Tybalt saw the repetitive glances at the dog as if she were making certain that Yarrow was still there instead of coming towards her. “I’ll be back late. Gonna check this place out. If I can get the guy to drop his damned price, I might have something to start Siren’s Call in. Awful decorating though. All green.”

She wrinkled her nose as if the colour green was somehow a personal affront.

Tybalt swallowed the question about what Siren’s Call was back down. That wasn’t for him. That was for Fenris and from the way Fenris smiled ever so slightly and nodded, Tybalt guessed that Fenris knew exactly what his roommate was talking about.

“Soooooo,” Isabela went on, giving Tybalt a pointed look. “Feel free to take your time. I’m betting sweet thing here blushes all over.”

Tybalt was still stammering out something that should vaguely resemble a reply but really was just a bunch of gibberish by the time the apartment’s door had slammed shut behind Isabela.

Yarrow nudged Tybalt in an attempt to see if his human was broken. It happened sometimes. His human needed a little extra care that way.

Tybalt absently stroked Yarrow’s head.

“That… uhm… that was your roommate? She’s…” He didn’t know how to finish that. He didn’t know if he liked her, not yet. The meeting had been too short of that, but she had been so full of life and confidence that Tybalt couldn’t help but be a little envious.

“The one and only.” Fenris nodded.

“She’s… a lot.” A lot of life and confidence. She, at that very first impression, was unapologetically herself in a way that Tybalt had never quite managed.

The closest he had ever come to that was being unaware of how people perceived him. There was a world of difference between unawareness and being unapologetic. The former could easily crumple with a few snide remarks, plunging people into insecurity. Isabela’s brand, on the other hand, seemed to Tybalt like the kind where every barb just made a person stronger and more determined.

“My apologies for her implications, please understand that I didn’t invite you here for that.” Fenris stood stock still, gaze averted to the floor.

The words left a sudden feeling of disappointment nestling in Tybalt’s chest. He couldn’t explain where it came from. Well, he probably could if he chose to examine it more closely but that, he decided, would not be necessary. Not now, at least.

“Don’t be! No need for apologies. She’s… uhm… she’s- she seems very nice. I’m sure I’ll like her once I get to know her. That’s kind of a given with me.” Tybalt produced the most apologetic smile that, he was sure, had ever been on his face. “Most of the time, it takes me a while to get comfortable with people.”

Fenris’s eyes snapped up, a slow smile curving over his lips. He took a step closer to Tybalt.

Tybalt’s breath caught in his throat.

“Am I to assume that I am an exception to the rule?” His voice slipped into a timbre Tybalt wasn’t familiar with.

Tybalt’s heart felt as if it was making a valiant effort to join his breath right in his throat. He wasn’t certain what it was about Fenris, but he made his body try to do very anatomically impossible things. He’d had more comfortable periods in his life.

He wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Fenris took a step closer.

The palms of Tybalt’s hands felt as if they cramped up, as if a string woven through his arm was pulled out too tightly through his palms. His mouth went dry and for once, his fingers stopped their fidgeting.

Was this really-

The apartment door slammed open. Fenris startled, taking a sudden step back and Tybalt mirrored the move. His heart hammered its way down to the pit of his stomach.

“Sorry!” Isabela called out, making her whirlwind way through the hall. “Forgot my wallet again! Out of your hair for real now!”

Tybalt briefly felt the overwhelming urge to bash his face into the nearest wall take over. It passed as soon as the door slammed shut again and Tybalt looked at Fenris with the sinking realization that whatever that moment could have been would never be. He rubbed his thumb over the palm of his hand, alternating between hands. The tight, cramped feeling in them was gone. Fenris didn’t look at him any more. Isabela’s brief return had torn away whatever determination that had taken hold of him.

In Tybalt’s imagination, this was where he would step up to Fenris and kiss him instead. In a perfect world, he’d wrap his arms around Fenris and hold on and Fenris would kiss him back.

This was not a perfect world, though, and Tybalt had always had trouble translating what he had dreamed up into reality, when he wanted nothing more than that in the world.

He fidgeted, biting his bottom lip.

He couldn’t wait forever. Fenris wouldn’t wait forever. There would be others who were smarter and smoother and funnier than Tybalt ready to come swooping in if Tybalt didn’t at least make an effort, he told himself.

His nails dug into the palms of his hand.

Fine then.

He made up his mind, gathering his anxiety and doubt together and stowing them as far away from his lips as he could get them, leaving them in the pit of his stomach to make him feel queasy. At least they wouldn’t force his mouth shut there. At least they wouldn’t clog up his throat there.

“Fenris?” Tybalt asked, his voice a hair’s breadth above a whisper.

Fenris looked up, brows furrowing. “Is there something wrong?”

“No! I mean… well, I was wondering and you don’t have to say yes and if you don’t that won’t change anything between us. I’ll just feel awkward and maybe avoid you for a few days-” or at least until Aveline dragged him out of hiding and made him face Fenris again, she was good at that “-but I was wondering if that you maybe.”

The words tumbled together. Tybalt shook his head, twirling his beads rapidly.

One deep, semi-calming breath.

“I was wondering if you would like to go out to dinner with me?”

For a second that felt as if it was longer than it had any right to be, Fenris remained silent. He looked back up at Tybalt.

Tybalt wasn’t even certain if time was moving.

Then Fenris smiled and the clock started ticking again.

“Yes,” Fenris said. “Yes, I would like that.”


	12. Chapter 12

News, naturally, spread like wildfire through Tybalt’s group of friends. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he had — probably foolishly so — not thought that only two hours after telling Anders what he’d done he would get a phone call from Carver. A phone call that definitely counted heavily towards one of the oddest conversations he had ever had with his younger brother.

Admitting that he didn’t even know the surname of the guy he had been spending time with and was going out to dinner with had not been Tybalt’s finest moment. He got the distinct feeling that Carver hadn’t been very reassured with ‘but Yarrow likes him!’ either.

At least Bethany, who had called after Carver, had been somewhat more positive, or at least better at faking it.

At that point, Tybalt had just been happy his mother hadn’t called yet with a demand for him to bring his friend up to the house for an introduction. He wasn’t an expert, but Tybalt didn’t think that perhaps this wasn’t quite a ‘meet the family for a third degree interrogation’ point yet, or showing Fenris the Amell estate. That place had never been Tybalt’s home anyway and the longer he could keep Fenris away from anything associated with the people who’d thought Tybalt’s father wasn’t good enough, the better.

Yes, he was still carrying massive grudge about that, even though he had never even met his grandparents.

They probably wouldn’t have liked him that much either, if he could go on the second-hand stories spilling from Uncle Gamlen whenever he’d had a glass of wine too much at a family gathering. His uncle had always been more prone to sharing the truth, however incoherent his tale might be, when alcohol made keeping lies neatly woven together too difficult.

There had been a lot of those kinds of stories over the years.

Regardless, his siblings had been informed. Tybalt expected that the blame for that rested squarely on Anders’s shoulders. The blabber mouth.

Even Mahariel and his boyfriend found out when Merrill came swooping into the bookstore with her own demands for details. The only upside there was that Mahariel didn’t seem to give one whit about Tybalt’s love life — could he call it a love life now? It didn’t feel like the term fit his situation overly well.

Zevran, however? Zevran seemed to enjoy this situation entirely too much.

The man insisted on helping, as if Tybalt couldn’t arrange a date on his own. Granted, the handful of dates Tybalt had been on had all been arranged by the other person, but he could do this damn it! He’d seen enough films and TV shows and read plenty of books to know the theory behind going out for dinner. It wasn’t that hard! He’d already done the most difficult part: asking Fenris out. There, step one had been completed without any help what so ever.

Step two: set a date. He’d done that one too.

Step three: pick a restaurant.

That, admittedly, was more difficult. Tybalt didn’t like eating out. He was a notoriously picky eater when it came to meals he hadn’t prepared himself. He’d created spreadsheets. He had listed the restaurants based on the sort of food they served, their online reviews, locations, average cost of a dinner provided they had a starter, main course, dessert and four drinks.

He had done the research and he had come no closer to figuring out where to take Fenris. Despite everything that he had looked up, he didn’t really know the restaurants, after all. What if the reviewers were wrong? What if they served tiny portions? What if the place was too loud and noisy and flashy inside?

Tybalt had complained about it to Merrill, bitterly so, when she asked him about his progress.

He hadn’t expected Zevran to come sliding out of one of the aisles, grin on his face that reminded Tybalt of one of Anders’s cats when it had caught a bird. All smug satisfaction and glee, though that could also be because he’d made Tybalt yelp and jump with his sudden appearance. Tybalt definitely hadn’t expected Zevran to suggest a restaurant.

Tybalt blinked owlishly at Zevran. He had discarded that particular restaurant because its website had made his eyes start a petition to secede from his skull and start their own sovereign nation known as Tybalt’s Sight. He had figured it was better to close the browser at that point.

“I don’t know anything about that place other than a truly awful choice in website design,” Tybalt said.

Zevran nodded in a brief yes, giving a brief, rueful smile. “Ah, I have to yield that point, but I believe that their food will more than make up for that failing on their part.”

Tybalt hesitated. He didn’t want to be rude and reject Zevran’s suggestion, which was honestly very kind even though Tybalt had no idea why Zevran was helping him. It wasn’t like they even knew each other. For goodness’s sake, even Mahariel was arching his eyebrows at Zevran, probably wondering where that had come from.

“I’ll have a look,” Tybalt promised,part in order to be done with the conversation and in part because it seemed the politest way to respond without making any promises. In the end, he asked Varric.

If there was anyone whom Tybalt knew with the most comprehensive knowledge about the restaurants in the city, it had to be Varric. It earned him a clasp on the shoulder that he still felt days later and a hearty laugh. Varric knew the restaurant Zevran had spoken off, knew it well enough in fact to second Zevran’s recommendation. The food was good, no live music and it usually wasn’t that busy.

All in all, it made up for not being able to take Yarrow along. There probably weren’t many restaurants that would be okay with a big dog traipsing along. It would be different if Yarrow were a service dog, but as a support dog, he had to play by different rules.

Step three: completed.

* * *

Step four: get to the restaurant.

That was, in effect, easy enough. Taxis were wonderful wonderful things, Tybalt decided. Just what they needed, between Tybalt being unable to drive, neither of them owning a car and not wanting to take the bus for a date.

The spot to Tybalt’s side was uncomfortably empty, lacking Yarrow’s presence. He reached down out of habit to card his fingers through Yarrow’s coat but found himself grasping at nothing but air. There was no comforting weight leaning against his legs as he stepped into the unfamiliar place. Tybalt swallowed against the feeling of wrong that settled in the pit of his stomach. Yarrow was back home, probably currently serving as a cat bed to Anders’s cats.

It wasn’t like he needed Yarrow to be with him at all times. Besides, he was out on a date. Everything would be fine.

The restaurant was small. Faint music drifted in through speakers, loud enough to wash away any silence, but quiet enough that it didn’t make Tybalt dig his fingers into his own palms and grit his teeth or wash over Fenris’s voice. Keeping up small talk was difficult enough without ambient noises masking what he was actually supposed to respond to.

A young woman came up to them, smile pasted on her face, dressed in a uniform that tried to look casual without running the risk of offending picky patrons. She had a tag on her shirt that said her name was Lisa. Could he call her by that or would that just be creepy? Better to err on the side of caution and not take the risk.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was chipper with a hint of an accent that reminded Tybalt of Zevran. Perhaps they came from the same country.

“Yes… ah… we have a reservation? Under the name Hawke. For two, I mean. I-” Breathe Tybalt. Try again. “We have a reservation for two people under the name Hawke.”

See? He’d done it.

Fenris knocked the back of his hand into Tybalt’s, drawing Tybalt’s attention to give him a brief flash of a smile. Tybalt’s heart eased back to where it was supposed to be.

They were led to a table near the back of the place, small with just two seats, a window to their left side and an illusion of privacy that would have been absent with most other seats. It was perfect. Tybalt picked the seat with his back to the wall, fingers going to his beads the second he sat down.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” the waitress asked.

“A glass of water, please and… uh…” Tybalt looked to Fenris.

“Tea, please,” Fenris added.

So far, Tybalt thought, so good. He allowed himself to relax a little and tried very hard not to think about how Yarrow wasn’t sprawled over his feet.

“Have you been here before?” asked Fenris.

Tybalt shook his head. “No, but Zevran, my boss’s boyfriend, recommended it and Varric backed it up.”

Do not mention the spreadsheets. Do not mention the spreadsheets. For the love of tiny little puppies, Tybalt, whatever you do, do not mention the spreadsheets. No one could ever interpret that as an endearing quirk. There was a line between making an effort and taking things too seriously and making those sheets had crossed that line in such a grandiose fashion that it would need a map in order to point out where the line had been crossed.

And no comments about the website’s abysmal design either. That would just be rude. Someone was bound to have worked very hard on the… ah… animated background. And the scaled up pictures. And picking Comic Sans Serif as the main font. What did all that matter when the food was good? He had been reassured that the food would be very good to the point where Varric had claimed that he would be willing to sell his right hand for their… what had it been called again? Oh yes. Their merluza de la vascca, if he recalled the name correctly. Some kind of dish with fish and clams and stuff. Tybalt had never even heard of it before, but Varric tended to have a good taste for food and drinks.

“Do you like it,” Tybalt asked. What if Fenris didn’t? What if he hated Spanish food? Maybe Tybalt should have asked before making reservations.

“From what I have seen so far, it is a fine place,” Fenris answered, shifting a little to look around. His eyes lingered on the doors, as if he was committing their location to memory. Tybalt didn’t know what that meant, but now wasn’t the time to ask and maybe end up dragging things Fenris wouldn’t want to talk about to the surface.

“I don’t go out to dinner much,” Tybalt confessed. “But I like cooking my own food. Do you like cooking?”

“As long as it is not complicated, though I mostly subsist on take-out. I am, however, a master at operating the microwave.”

Tybalt stared at Fenris, even when their drinks were put down in front of them. He was only briefly distracted from the horrific realization that he seemed to have picked up the habit of collecting people who couldn’t cook when the waitress asked for their orders.

Okay, perhaps he was just being dramatic. Certainly Fenris could cook. Perhaps they just had vastly different interpretations of ‘not complicated’. That could be it, right?

“What do you like to cook?” Tybalt asked, unable to help himself or his curiosity.

Fenris considered his answer for a few seconds and lowered the teabag in the cup of hot water that had been left in front of him.

“Truthfully,” he finally said, “I cannot think of anything right now. I suppose a grilled cheese sandwich is easy enough. Or macaroni and cheese, provided that it comes in a box.”

Maybe, Tybalt considered, he should just bite the bullet and start a cooking class for his friends. Merrill could assist in the teaching. Maybe that would help. That would also mean, however, that Fenris and Anders would be in the same kitchen. He could already envision the ingredients splattered on the ceiling as they tried to one-up each other. Tybalt was fairly certain that Anders still hadn’t entirely forgiven Fenris for the Mario Kart hustle, if the grumbles for justice and vengeance were anything to go by. It would be amusing, that much was true, but oh dear god the mess that they would turn his kitchen into. He would have to regretfully pass on that adventure.

“And Isabela can’t cook?” Tybalt asked, just to make sure.

“She attempted to microwave popcorn two days ago. The firefighters were involved.”

Tybalt blinked, then tried to do the math on how that had even happened in his head before coming up blank.

“Come again?”

An amused smile curled over Fenris’s lips. “She accidentally set it to forty minutes instead of four and promptly forgot about it. Our smoke detector caught on before she did and a neighbor thought that she was helping by calling for the firefighters.”

Yes that… that would do it.

“I don’t know whether to be scared or impressed,” Tybalt said.

Fenris snorted.

“I believe scared would be an adequate response, should anyone ever let her near a cooking utensil again.”

Tybalt made a mental note to not invite Isabela in case he ever did decide to go through with the cooking class for friends. His neighbours wouldn’t be pleased if she burned the place down while trying to boil water or something.

“Right,” said Tybalt. “If Isabela heads to the kitchen, I run for the hills. I can do that.”

Fenris laughed, a short chortle of a sound and he quickly covered his mouth with his hand.

Had that been funny? Tybalt hadn’t thought so, but maybe he just hadn’t been aware. Bolstered by this unexpected success, he straightened a little in his seat and shot Fenris a pleased grin.

“It is good to see that your survival instincts are well-honed,” Fenris commented.

“Eh.” Tybalt shrugged. “Kinda. I mean, you’re talking to the guy who got lost in the woods because he saw an interesting flower and wandered away.” Poor Merrill had been on the verge of starting a search and rescue that day. “And that happened just half a year ago, Don’t underestimate my uncanny ability to get into trouble.”

This time, Fenris didn’t hide his laugh. Wrinkles appeared at the corner his eyes and he shook his head. “Consider that ability noted. How did that end?”

“Yarrow,” Tybalt replied. “I had Yarrow with me and we’d gone with Merrill, so once I realized I’d wandered away from the group, I told Yarrow to find Merrill. She usually sneaks him some treats whenever we meet up, so that was like telling Yarrow to go for the treat jar. He just took off.” And had dragged Tybalt through nettle and brambles. He had never been more pleased with his jeans than that day.

“So I should bribe your dog with treats. This is good to know.”

“Nah, he likes you a lot already,” said Tybalt. “And Yarrow is a better judge of character than I am.”

A beat of silence stretched between them. Tybalt shifted in his seat, mentally paging through the different small talk subjects he had prepared, when Fenris broke the silence.

“And you?” Fenris asked. “Do you like me?”

Tybalt dragged his gaze from Fenris’s shoulder to his eyes, just for the briefest of moments their eyes locked and the feeling hit him in the throat with a sharp jab. There was so much in those big green eyes. Softness, old aches, but also happiness, Tybalt thought. Or maybe that was just what he wanted to see.

The moment broke with the waitress coming up to the table and placing the soup down in front of them. A spark of irritation flared up in Tybalt at the intrusion, but it died down as swiftly as it came up. The waitress retreated again, leaving Tybalt dry mouthed and breathless.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “I do, very much.”


	13. Chapter 13

There. He’d said it and there was no backspace, no undo action, in real life. This was clearly a design flaw. Sadly Tybalt had been waiting for a patch long enough to know that it wasn’t coming. He would just have to live with the consequences. He shifted in his seat, scratching his nails over the table’s surface. His nails hit little dents and grooves in the table’s surface as he bit his bottom lip, eye focusing on his soup. Well, his gazpacho if he was going to be technical.

Fenris hadn’t said anything yet. Why hadn’t Fenris said anything?

Granted, it had only been a few seconds, if that much, but they felt like hours.

“Hawke,” Fenris said. His hand crept forward across the table until his fingertips bumped into Tybalt’s hand, halting Tybalt’s scratching. “I am glad that you do.”

He was glad? Tybalt mulled the words over in his brain, dissecting the sentence for every possible meaning that he could find within it. One of these days he would have to learn to stop doing that. His brain was like the internet: put in the symptoms, and out comes the most unlikely, painful, and doubtlessly fatal diagnosis available in the whole wide world.

“I… uhm… that’s good, right?”

Fenris smiled and nodded. “Yes, Hawke. That’s good.” He scraped his throat and stirred his soup in idle eight patterns. “You are a handsome man, intelligent, funny and interesting. I have not yet been lucky enough to attract the attention of one like you and it is difficult to believe that that has changed.”

Tybalt almost missed it, but there was a faint tremble in Fenris’s voice. He wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t used to the exact cadence he had come to associate with Fenris. It matched a very short twitch in Fenris’s fingers before Fenris pulled his hand back and almost absently rubbed his scarred knuckles.

A need to get up and wrap his arms around Fenris, to give him one of the tightest, longest hugs he could manage, bubbled up within Tybalt’s chest. He couldn’t identify the source of it, but looking at the way Fenris kept rubbing his scars there, and remembering the barely detectable tremble in his voice raised the hair on the back of Tybalt’s neck and whispered that something wasn’t right. That maybe Fenris had been hurt in some way.

Now was neither the time nor the place for that. Tybalt wouldn’t want to air all his secrets and dark places out in the open where anyone could overhear and judge.

“You know,” Tybalt said, “Anders is still plotting his revenge for that trick you pulled on him with Mario Kart.”

Fenris arched an eyebrow. “There was no trickery involved whatsoever,” he insisted, but there was a definite little smirk twitching under the thin veneer of absolute innocence.

“Look, I can’t tell whether you’re being sarcastic or not but you _definitely_ tricked him.” Tybalt jabbed his spoon in Fenris’s general direction. “Not that I’m saying it was bad, mind you. I’m all for people pulling one over on Anders when it comes to that game. He’s driven me off the track one too many a time for me to summon even a shred of sympathy there. Come to think of it, he’s the same way with pushing people off of the tracks as some of his cats are about pushing random stuff from the counter. Cats really, really like gravity, don’t they? Maybe they have some kind of pact to toss things to the floor so they can land on their feet when they fall.”

Wait.

He’d had a point there before he managed to distract himself with cats. He wasn’t even a cat person! At least it seemed to amuse Fenris, going by the soft smile on his face.

“Aaaaanyway.” Tybalt dragged himself back to the topic at hand. “My point was— don’t do that eyebrow thing at me Fenris I know what that means. It was in the emotion cards. I so definitely had a point. That point was that you should take credit where credit is due. I mean, getting me to believe something is one thing. Getting the guy who can tell if a patient is lying about what… errr… recreational substances they took to believe you is one a whole new level.”

Look at him, talking about something other than plants and herbs. For a second, Tybalt allowed himself to be amazed at how easily that had come to him, even though it hadn’t been about any of his go-to topics.

“And you say he seeks vengeance?” Fenris questioned, somehow managing to eat his soup without making a mess even though he seemed to be unable to stop that little smile.

“Yeah. Well, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds, but he definitely wants to get even.”

“Well then,” Fenris said with a dip in his tone that Tybalt didn’t trust at all. “I would hate to disappoint your friends.”

Tybalt narrowed his eyes and leaned forward over his soup. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing.”

Tybalt squinted. “I don’t believe you.”

Usually when Anders or Varric or Merrill tried to play the ‘I’m not up to anything I’m an innocent I don’t know who put the food colouring in the faucet’ card, they had tells. Merrill’s tells were easy. Anders was a little better at hiding them. Unraveling Varric’s tells had literally taken years.

“I was merely considering-”

Ah, see, Fenris was plotting something!

“- that perhaps a rematch would not be out of order.”

Well, Tybalt thought, that wasn’t so bad. He could just invite Fenris to a game night. He already knew most of Tybalt’s friends anyway; he hadn’t met Merrill but as far as the group went, she was the least likely to scare Fenris off. Tybalt hoped.

“And perhaps make the game a little more interesting,” Fenris suggested and sedately resumed eating his soup while Tybalt tried to figure out what Fenris had exactly meant by that.

Interesting? How could he make a game that generally involved creative cursing and threats more inte- Oh! Ooooh. Now he got it.

“You’re not going to bet money on a computer game,” Tybalt insisted.

Fenris arched an eyebrow. Right. As if that served as a proper counter-argument.

“Aveline will have a cow,” Tybalt countered.

That did not seem to help his case at all. Fenris’s eyebrow, for one, did not go down and he even upped his side with a little smirk that did things to Tybalt’s brain. Melty things. Happy goo things. It wasn’t fair!

“Merrill will make sad eyes at us if she loses. No, wait, I’ll make sad eyes. Merrill will cheat.” She was always cheating, like asking him questions about a certain handsome guy who had shown up at the store. He still wasn’t over that one.

“That argument might be more effective if I knew this Merrill,” Fenris said.

He had a point there.

“Stop logicing at me.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Well… I’m making it one. I’ll do it by the power vested in me by Sheer Stubbornness. Hah. It’s a word now.” Tybalt nodded, feeling satisfied with his new addition to their vocabulary.

Fenris laughed and didn’t even try to hide it behind a cough this time. It brought a smile to Tybalt’s face.

“How did you meet your friends? They seem like…” Fenris stalled, uncertain how to finish the sentence without offending.

“Tightly condensed mayhem and a recipe for disaster and property damage?” Tybalt completed the sentence for him. He was a helper like that.

“That… that sounds accurate,” Fenris conceded.

Tybalt shifted, scraping his spoon through the last of his gazpacho while mulling over the best way to explain that ever-evolving snowball of wondrous chaos.

“Well,” he started. “Okay. Aveline and I grew up next door to each other. Our parents used to babysit for each other. I practically learned to walk while holding her hand. You know how I met Anders, well, sorta. Yarrow stole his cat before I started feeding him.”

Fenris blinked.

“How, exactly, does a dog steal a cat?”

Tybalt shrugged. “Easily, it turns out. Well, actually the cat just jumped onto Yarrow’s back and Yarrow just kept walking into my apartment. They still do that. Okay, so perhaps that’s not the right thing to call it, but it was the first thing Anders said to me. Ever. He knocked. A lot. Loudly. So I went to open my door and without so much as a how do you do, he just looked at me and went ‘Your dog stole my cat’.”

It was sweet, if anyone asked Tybalt, and the ultimate proof that Yarrow didn’t mind being the cat’s servant despite his protests to the contrary. He really should record Yarrow and the cat one of these days. He’d be internet-famous in a second!

So he’d told about Aveline and Anders. That left him with Merrill and Varric.

“I met Varric online, actually. I got into an argument with some other fans of his books about how he used a poison the wrong way. He was one of the other users who sided with me. Imagine my surprise when the guy I’d been rambling at about the proper plants to use for that kind of effect was the author of the book.” Tybalt hadn’t been able to even look at his computer for a few days. “He put in a good word for me with Mahariel when I was looking for a job. Merrill runs the flower shop next door and I wandered in there because I was nervous about starting my first day, so I was kind of hiding. Sort of.”

That had not been one of his proudest moment, but in all fairness, he had a lot of those moments and that one hadn’t been nearly as bad as some of the others.

“So. That’s probably more than you wanted to know.” And look at him yammering on about himself. If he kept this up, Fenris would think he was self-centered, or even worse, uninterested in Fenris. “What about you? How did you meet Isabela?”

It was a start. He could just go from there.

“It is not an interesting story,” Fenris tried to brush it off as the waitress took their empty bowls away.

“I’d like to know more about you.” More, at least, that didn’t involve dragging up memories that Fenris didn’t want to share. Tybalt hoped that questions about what had to be a recent past wouldn’t be quite as difficult.

“Very well.” Fenris paused as the waitress approached their table to take their order.

Fenris took the menu card and turned it to show to the girl. “I am uncertain how to pronounce it, but I would like to have this.” He pointed at a dish. The waitress nodded and jotted his order down. Part of Tybalt wondered if Fenris knew what he was ordering of whether he was masking his difficulties with reading.

Their orders placed, Fenris turned his attention back to Tybalt. “As for how I met Isabela. I saw two men bothering her and thought that she needed help. She did not and punched me in the face.”

“She did _what_?!” Tybalt yelped, far louder than was appropriate for a restaurant setting. He shrunk down as people turned to look where that had come from. Indoor voices, Tybalt, indoor voices.

“In her defense, she believed that I was with the men bothering her.”

Truth be told, Tybalt had expected something closer to a story like ‘I saw an advert for a room and responded’ instead of, well, that. Yet, even based on the short time he had spent in Isabela’s presence, it felt like a completely plausible story.

“But how do you go from being punched in the face to being her house mate?” Tybalt asked.

“She liked my eyes,” answered Fenris.

That… yes. No.

“I think it might be better for my peace of mind if I don’t ask how that even works.”

“That might be for the best,” Fenris agreed, still smiling at Tybalt.

Tybalt played with his spoon, carefully balancing it on the tip of his fingers. The metal warmed to the touch and the smooth surface felt calm, if he could call it such.

“I just realized,” Tybalt spoke up, “that I don’t know that much about you. I keep rambling on and I never ask anything about you. I don’t even know your surname.”

“Seheron,” said Fenris, quick and sharp like a surgeon’s blade, punching the word out as if it lay unnatural on his tongue, before he caught himself. “My past is uninteresting. Regardless of that, I enjoy hearing you speak.”

Not half as much, Tybalt was willing to bet, as he enjoyed hearing Fenris’s voice. It still made Tybalt’s brain want to curl up in the sun and purr like a happy, fat cat. Or snore like a well-fed Yarrow. Either way, the level of contentment was the same.

Tybalt studied Fenris. If Fenris got any more evasive about his past, people would be likely to mistake him for a politician. What was hidden there?

Please don’t let it be a pile of dead bodies. Tybalt could deal with pretty much anything else, but if his initial, baseless flailing with worries about Fenris possibly being a serial killer turned out to be true, he would just curl up and never attempt to date anyone ever again. After calling in Aveline, of course, civic duty and all that fun stuff. It was probably nothing. Well, not nothing, but Fenris couldn’t be a murderer. Absolutely not. Tybalt refused to entertain the notion any further.

He was just going to have to trust Fenris and wait. Eventually, if the time would ever be right, Fenris would open up to him and until then they had the present to contend with.

The present that came with big plates of spicy, rich smelling food.

Tybalt’s stomach clenched as the scent hit his nose. He hadn’t expected it to smell quite this strong. Eating, he realized, was going to be a challenge. He didn’t want to offend the cook either. It was probably perfectly fine for anyone else. It was just a little too much for him.

A few bites, he bargained with himself. Just a few small bites and then the biggest ice cream dessert on the menu and he’d make himself a peanut-butter and chocolate sprinkle sandwich as soon as he got home. Would that be feasible? He couldn’t see why not. It wasn’t as if he felt particularly hungry anyway.

“We don’t have to talk about your past,” Tybalt pointed out, even though his decision to not pry was becoming more and more difficult to uphold. “We can talk about anything you want to. Like… like video games.”

Tybalt poked at one of the clams on his plate and then began to push them around, trying to make every clam line up evenly. If only nature would play nice and let them all grow to the same size and shape. The little one to the left looked so sad compared to the big one next to it.

“I’d just like to know a little more about you, that’s all,” Tybalt added, looking up again.

Fenris nodded, slowly. “Very well. I play video games, but not much. Isabela does not own many. I do not believe she technically owns the console either. I have lived in this city for five months now and so far this has been the best evening I have had here.”

Tybalt blinked. “Are you trying to charm me?”

If he was, it was most definitely working.

“Not intentionally,” Fenris answered. “But I will take the credit for it.”

For a moment, Tybalt had to wrestle down the urge to let out the most embarrassing noise that had ever bubbled up inside him. In the end, he managed to tone it down to a very quiet squeak. He couldn’t help it!

Fenris chuckled. The sound confused Tybalt for a moment: at him or with him? With him, he decided. No one looked at people like they meant something, like there were answers written on their skin that they needed to read over and over again and then laugh at them.

Tybalt stabbed a piece of fish onto his fork.

“I really like this evening too,” Tybalt confessed before popping the bit of fish in his mouth, lest he end up making another sound that was never meant to come from a human being.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! This chapter deals with dissociation. If you are worried about reading this/can't read this but still want to know what happens in the chapter, there will be a brief summary at the start of the next chapter or you can message me on my tumblr (link on my profile page). Any and all questions will be answered privately unless you explicitly state that you want me to answer publicly or ask me on anon (I also reserve the right not to respond if the person asking the question is rude/abusive in the question).
> 
> This chapter was particularly difficult and draining to write. I went into it thinking that I had experienced enough of these episodes to write it accurately, but then found out that my memory of them is shaky at best because I was going through them and I was constantly worried people would blame characters for this. The truth is that when you're already on that edge, anything can send you over. I've been sent over that edge by a glint in a girl's ring after a trying day.

While the date had gone very well, by the end Tybalt could tell that he should go home. Everything became sharper and brighter and noisier, down to the squeak of the waitress’s shoes. The other diners’ voices grated on his nerves like wet sandpaper. He got the distinct impression that someone had placed his head in an invisible bench vice and was slowly but surely tightening it. He was familiar enough with the sensation that he knew what was sure to follow if he didn’t listen to what his brain was telling him.

He just wished his brain learned to speak in something other than ‘pain pain pain’. That would have been just great.

At least he had learned a little more about Fenris. He didn’t have a particular sweet tooth — Tybalt made a mental note not to save any of Merrill’s unicorn poop cookies for him — but liked dark chocolate. He liked to go outside just after big storms. He loved warm weather and thought that snow was a cruel joke that should keep its fluffy cold away from him and his general vicinity. He had a lousy sense of humor since he seemed to genuinely think that Tybalt was funny.

Fenris would learn the truth about that last one eventually, Tybalt was sure of it.

Most of all, Fenris picked up on the signals that Tybalt really needed to go home, be somewhere quiet and calm.

They made it to Tybalt’s place first, the taxi waiting in front of the building. Tybalt hesitated. Should he invite Fenris up? He’d seen that happen in films and books. He’d done that with one of his previous partners. Would Fenris expect that? Would he want that? Should Tybalt just go along-

No.

No, he’d been over this before. He shouldn’t just do things because he thought they were expected.

It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

He paused in front of the building, dragged words into his throat from the dark corners in his head where they had gone into hiding during the ride back.

“I’m sorry.” The sentence felt chopped, awkward and heavy even to Tybalt but it was the best he could offer. “I’d like to- I need time to come down.”

To feel alright in his skin again.

Fenris nodded, standing right in front of Tybalt, almost nose to nose. Well, they would have been nose to nose, Tybalt reflected, if not for the height difference. Right now, it was more like Tybalt’s nose to Fenris’s forehead. The Hawkes were prone to, as Varric so eloquently put it, being freakishly tall. Except Varric didn’t use those words. He somehow managed to find the words that made it sound funny and not at all insulting.

Tybalt would pay in gold to learn at least a fraction of Varric’s skill in that.

Not that he had gold, but he would if he had any! He liked silver better anyway.

Fenris’s eyes focused on something over Tybalt’s shoulder and in a split second, his entire posture changed. His shoulders went rigid and drawn up. His back snapped straight as if his spine had been replaced with an unbendable iron rod. His arms shook with with the force he used to ball his wrists. He took a step back from Tybalt and the only way he could have done it faster would have been for him to leap backwards instead.

As fast as the change had come over Fenris, it disappeared again and was replaced with a calm so practiced and polished that even Tybalt could tell at a glance that it was fake.

“Fenris?” he asked, confused and uncertain, half turning around to look behind him and see what had elicited that response.

There was nothing there. Just a street, late in the evening, cars driving by and people walking over the pavement. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He turned back to Fenris. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Fenris’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. and his eyes kept darting around. His knuckles had turned white in his shaking fists.

“Don’t- please Fenris, I can tell something’s wrong. Did I do something? Please, tell me.” Tybalt couldn’t keep the pleading out of his voice. If he’d done something wrong, he needed to know.

Fenris’s face softened by just a fraction. Some of the lines around his eyes faded and his gaze lifted ever so briefly to meet Tybalt’s eyes.

“You did not do anything,” he said and Tybalt couldn’t figure out why instead of making him feel relieved, it just felt like a hot, heavy stone dropped into his stomach. “I need to go.”

“No- Fenris wait I-”

Fenris didn’t listen. He backed away, no longer looking at Tybalt. He ducked his head as he got into the taxi and left Tybalt standing on the pavement confused and uncertain about what had just happened.

He had already been on the edge of something before, but now he went careening over that cliff and into unpleasant but familiar territory.

For someone whose brain hardly ever seemed to shut up, there were times when the gears ground to a halt and all he could do was what worked on autopilot. When all he could do was force himself to move, to walk with only the faintest idea of where he was going. A faint idea of safe and home echoed in his head without answer.

He pushed the door open, movements short and mechanical and done more because his body always moved like that when opening the building’s door than because he had actually willed it. Tybalt dragged his feet.

Yarrow. He needed Yarrow and a place to sit and just… just not be him for a while. Just be gone and empty for a little bit until the world felt okay again, and the stress from the date had faded and he could deal with… with whatever had just happened, but that would be later. Much, much later.

Walking up the stairs was a challenge on its own when the staircase didn’t feel as real as it should be, when Tybalt was half in his head and half somewhere else. Later, he would describe like he had done a dozen times before: it was as if he was sitting somewhere looking at the world as if it was happening behind a thick glass plate, as if he wasn’t seeing it with his own eyes but through a camera in a first person perspective.

He knew the way to Anders’s apartment in his sleep.

Tybalt fished his keys out of his pocket and stared at them, then at the lock on Anders’s door.

He didn’t- what should-

Knock. Knocking would help. He should do that. Tybalt raised his hand and knocked, or tried to. He blinked at the door. Had that made a sound or had he just pushed against it?

The door opened a few seconds later, bringing Anders’s feet into view.

“Hawke?” That was Anders’s voice.

Tybalt realized that he should probably answer, but talking was not on the table. He began to rock back and forth on his heels and was distantly aware of both Yarrow pressing against his leg and Anders distantly cursing.

“Did something happen? Are you hurt? Did he-”

It took effort to parse the sentence, but finally Tybalt shook his head. No, not really. He could have dealt with this without the overstimulation from the restaurant. Sadly, reality was entirely different.

Yarrow pushed against the back of Tybalt’s leg, urging him forward. He’d been there with Tybalt through a fair few of these episodes and he’d been trained to know what to do. Herding Tybalt like this was only a little slower than herding the human to the food bowl in the morning.

Time was always a flimsy concept and even more so when Tybalt lost track of himself. He could remember what had happened, but only vaguely like a boring film he’d watched years ago rather than something that had happened to him. He could remember Anders putting his weighted blanket over his shoulder. He remembered the weight of Yarrow’s head in his lap. He remembered Aveline coming in.

He remembered the clinking sound as either Anders or Aveline put a glass of water within his reach, then the quiet murmur of them talking on the other side of the room.

It wasn’t the first time for them either.

Tybalt didn’t know how long he’d sat there, in the corner of the room on the floor with his back pressed against the wall. One hand curled into Yarrow’s fur, the other methodically picking at the lint on the edge of his blanket.

At least, he noted, he’d gone to Anders’s instead of just wandering off and ending up somewhere he’d never been before.

He licked his lips, but found his mouth dry. He reached for the glass of water, noting a tremor in his hand and the bone deep weariness that had settled throughout his body.

“Hawke?” Aveline was the first to speak, having noticed Tybalt moving.

Great. Now he should really say something to keep them from worrying more about him or, worse yet, calling Bethany and have her drive down there in what, he guessed, was the middle of the night and then she’d be tired and drive her car off of the road and it would be his fault and-

He needed to stop the thinking part before his brain decided it needed another break from the stress he put it through on a daily basis.

“Hawke, do you feel like you can talk?” Aveline asked. She hadn’t moved from her chair.

Tybalt swallowed. Did he feel like it?

“A little,” he finally said. “Tired.”

Yarrow licked his hand.

Aveline got up from her chair, closing the distance between them with carefully measure strides and making sure to keep quiet. Unexpected sounds were never fun for Tybalt, but right now they were even worse.

“Want to tell me what happened?” Aveline asked.

Not particularly, Tybalt thought, but Aveline and Anders would draw their own conclusions if he lapsed into silence again. He knew how their brains worked and the last thing he wanted was for them to track Fenris down and, well, do whatever it was they thought needed doing.

“Nothing,” Tybalt mumbled. Even the one word was a struggle.

“This doesn’t look like nothing,” said Anders.

“It’s not-” He stumbled, feeling his words slip away from him again. He should just curl up in bed and sleep. Maybe the world would make more sense tomorrow. Maybe whatever had happened would appear to be perfectly normal and reasonable once he had had some rest and his brain decided to cooperate again.

“I didn’t check,” Tybalt finally managed to get out, focusing more on his fingers carding through Yarrow’s fur than his friends. “The restaurant.”

“Did the restaurant overwhelm you?” Anders asked.

Tybalt shook his head.

“Needed to get home,” He said after a few dragged out moments. “Got home. Goodbye to Fenris.” He drew his hand from Yarrow’s head and let his fingers flutter ineffectively through the air. He wanted to say something else but his throat closed up and he didn’t trust the trembling in his chest.

“And something happened?” Aveline asked.

Tybalt nodded miserably.

“Something bad?”

He shook his head.

“Something unexpected?”

A nod.

How could this happen? Tybalt bit the inside of his cheek. He’d been in fights and kept himself together, but the second something he wasn’t used to happened in the social arena, he froze up at best and, well, this happened at worst. Fights didn’t come with small talk or unwritten rules that he all too easily broke.

Aveline sat back with a sigh, pushed a hand through her hair. “You’re not injured?”

Tybalt shook his head again.

“Okay then. Do you want to go back to your place?”

It was, Tybalt guessed, testament to how long Aveline had known him. She had seen Bethany -- and before that his father -- check on Tybalt like this. This time, Aveline seamlessly slipped into this role. He managed to look up and focused on her shoulder. He produced a barely there, wobbly smile.

The smile didn’t even convince himself, let alone his friends.

“Home. Yes.” To his own bed in his own room, which would undoubtedly be more comfortable than his spot on the floor.

He looked at Aveline and Anders, who looked back at him. One of Anders’s cats hopped out of the bookcase to the left and strolled off. Wait, what had he been thinking? Right. Going home. That was going to involve him getting up. That seemed like an awful lot of effort right then. Maybe he could just sleep right there. Anders wouldn’t mind, would he?

But they’d worry and he had already made them do that more than enough that evening. Or night.

Shit, what was the time?

Tybalt looked at the clock on the wall above the television. Right then. Apparently it wasn’t as much evening as really early morning. He’d kept Aveline and Anders up for hours. They both had work later that day. He wasn’t certain if he should feel more touched or guilty over that revelation.

Feelings were too complicated to delve into at this moment, he decided.

Tybalt levered himself slowly up to his feet and wobbled for a second. His legs protested both against the long period of being practically motionless and now suddenly being forced into mobility again. Yarrow clambered upright immediately and pressed close against his human’s legs.

“You alright there?” Anders asked.

Tybalt nodded. Well, yes. At least on the standing up part. He didn’t feel like he was about to keel over, but he didn’t want to delve into the other stuff right then.

“Should I come with?” Anders looked to Aveline, who shook her head.

“No, I’ve got it from here.” She opened the door to the hall and waited for Tybalt to shuffle out.

Everything began to feel sharper to Tybalt again, even the sound of his shoes on the floor, no longer as if there was a thick sheet of plastic or glass between him and the world. He gripped the weighted blanket tighter and kept it wrapped around his shoulder as he shuffled out the door.

Tybalt paused in the doorway, turned half to Anders.

“Thanks and… sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s what friends are for.”

Tybalt wanted to point out that plenty of friends in his past wouldn’t have been there for this, but the words to get that message across were too large and unwieldy. Instead, he shuffled to his apartment.

Tybalt flopped forward onto his bed. His legs stuck out over the side and his head had missed the pillow and he couldn’t bring himself to care. Sleep would be fantastic. Yarrow scrambled onto the bed as well and rested his head on Tybalt’s left shoulder.

Tybalt heard Aveline’s footsteps enter the bedroom.

“It’s not his fault,” Tybalt mumbled. “I don’t know what happened but something spooked him.”

That had to be it. It didn’t make sense for Fenris to leave like that, and the more Tybalt thought on it, the more he kept going back to the way Fenris had frowned, briefly, when looking behind Tybalt. How quickly he had gone tense after that and left. It kind of reminded Tybalt of Carver when he had been told that no, he couldn’t fight that group of bullies no matter how rude or cruel they had been to his siblings or friends, and that mom would rip him a new one if he got suspended from school for fighting again.

Kind of, but not entirely.

“Are you sure?” Aveline asked.

No, Tybalt wanted to say, but he forced himself to shape another word. “Yes.”

Aveline sighed.

“I mean-” Tybalt turned around and propped himself up “-I’ll handle this. I’m a mature adult. I can deal with this.”

He’d just ask Fenris about it the next time they met up or called each other. Just a ‘hey, you left so suddenly the other day, are you alright?’ couldn’t be that hard. He had the words prepared for it and everything!

He always liked the way Aveline smiled, how she showed teeth and merry wrinkles around her eyes. When she smiled, it was real, and Tybalt could trust that there was nothing hidden under the surface. Even when it was a tiny smile, like now, and he could read the relief in the lines on her face.

“I’m okay now. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” Tybalt promised. “Just very tired, is all. Sorry I kept you up. Tell Donnic I’m sorry?”

Aveline took a few steps closer and ruffled Tybalt’s hair, the way she’d done when they were younger. It still made him whine about his hair the same way too.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she told him. “You are my friend and you needed me. Donnic knows this too. I’m here for you, like you are for me. Go and sleep, Hawke. I’ll text you tomorrow.”

Tybalt nodded. Sleep sounded so very good right about now. He was already drifting off by the time Aveline locked his apartment door on her way out.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the people who skipped the last chapter due to the warning above it a quick summary of what you need to know for this chapter to make sense:
> 
> It was the end of the date. Tybalt was already dangling on the edge of too much: too much noise, too many tastes he wasn't used to, too many people, too much social in a place he wasn't familiar with. They'd just arrived at Tybalt's building and were saying goodbye when Fenris saw something behind Tybalt that spooked him. In response, he pretty much took off and Tybalt, having no idea what just happened, dissociated because having something unexpected and inexplicable (to him at least) happen was the last drop.
> 
> And now we pick up after that!

Three days later, and Tybalt still hadn’t heard from Fenris. No visit to the store, no text message, Fenris hadn’t even shown up at Tybalt’s place. Oh, Tybalt could try and call Fenris, certainly, but there was one small problem with that plan. Namely, the calling part. Tybalt didn’t like calling people. Personally, he would rather take an ice pick to his ear and swivel it around inside than willingly call someone.

Perhaps that was a little over the top. Or a lot. Probably a lot.

Still, if he could avoid calling people, he would.

Tybalt had returned to work after spending his two days off stumbling around his apartment, tending his plants and emptying out the jar of peanut-butter while Yarrow worked hard at upping his game at being Tybalt’s second shadow. Tybalt felt kind of proud that he managed to keep checking his phone for messages down to about once every five minutes during the first day after the date. He’d still been too tired and jittery that day to even think about making the first move.

Besides, Fenris had to be the one to walk away so he had to be the one to come back to Tybalt, right? That seemed fair. It sounded like it could be one of those many social interaction rules that Tybalt had never got the hang of.

Except he hadn’t even heard a beep from Fenris. The guy had no social media presence as far as Tybalt knew — he’d broken down and googled until his fingers felt ready to call a strike — no facebook, no twitter, not even a blog. Nothing online pointed towards the existence of a Fenris Seheron.

That was odd, but there were still people who didn’t like putting their lives online. None that Tybalt personally knew — even Aveline had a facebook account — but it wasn’t that impossible.

Fenris was just a private person. That had to be it, and none of those dramatic, completely baseless, devoid of even a touch of reality ideas that his brain kept coming up with.

On day three, back at work, Tybalt had resorted to snapping to attention every time the shop’s door opened, even jumping out from between the aisles to see if Fenris had finally shown up. After about an hour of this, Mahariel had taken to rolling his eyes at Tybalt. He had no right to complain about Tybalt’s moping. At least Mahariel had a boyfriend, even if said boyfriend was out of the country most of the time. Come to think of it, Tybalt had never seen Zevran stick around this long before. Maybe the blond sneak had decided to stick around this time.

So far, Fenris had been conspicuous by his continued and persistent absence. Tybalt, meanwhile, had grown decidedly snippier with people.

He had, for one brief second, had a brightly flaring flash of hope shoot through him when the door opened and his eyes first landed on white hair.

Except the white hair belonged to an elderly lady and not Fenris.

Damn it.

By the end of the day, his neck hurt from his snapping up all the time and turning, and he was pretty sure he had a bruise shaped exactly like the corner of one of the display tables decorating his left upper leg. He had never expected those tables to be that hard, sturdy, and most of all, that they would win in a head on collision. He had made a mental note to avoid any future games of chicken with the store furniture. He made no promises about his furniture at home.

When the last few customers had left the store, well after closing time — it never failed to amaze Tybalt how rude people could be, he wanted to go home and see if maybe Fenris had materialized there somewhere — Tybalt glared at the door as if it had personally failed him and made a number of insinuations about Tybalt’s mother.

This, sadly, happened at the same time Merrill came into the shop. She froze mid-bounce, looked at Tybalt and his thunderous expression, behind herself, and then at herself.

“Oh my, did I do something wrong?” Merrill asked.

Her big, confused eyes sent an instant bolt of guilt stabbing through Tybalt. He was a horrible person.

“It wasn’t you!” he rushed to explain.

“Oh? Who was it supposed to be then?” she asked.

“Fenris.”

“You’re angry with Fenris?”

Oh god, he hadn’t meant that either! At least, he supposed, this meant that neither Anders nor Aveline had shared the story of that night with anyone in their friends’ group.

“No! I just- there is- I haven’t seen him since the date,” Tybalt admitted and his shoulders drooped with the words. “Or heard from him.”

Now that he said it out loud, worry started to worm its way into Tybalt’s thoughts. Why wouldn’t he have heard from Fenris by now? No matter what had happened, their date hadn’t been _that_ bad. Not until the end, at least.

“Oh dear,” Merrill’s eyes went even wider. Tybalt had thought that that would be anatomically impossible, something reserved for stylized cartoon figures rather than actual people. Merrill, however, seemed set on defying those expectations. At least, Tybalt consoled himself, this particular skill set was exclusively Merrill’s as far as he knew. There would be no telling what kind of chaos could have unfolded had Bethany possessed this ability.

Bethany the Supreme Ruler of the Universe came to mind. Tybalt promptly shuddered at the thought.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?” Tybalt asked, trying desperately to distract himself from the mental imagery of a world where his sister was ruler of all.

“Oh! Should I? What-”

“-You don’t have to-”

“- happened?”

Oh crap, why did he have to bring it up? This could have all been avoided if he had just learned to keep his mouth shut but no. He had to literally invite Merrill to ask that question.

Tybalt groaned, folded over the counter and thudded his forehead against the smooth surface. “Nothing,” he moaned, sounding absolutely pitiful even to his own ears.

A second or so later, he felt Merrill’s thin fingers rake through his hair. Most other people wouldn’t get to do that. Tybalt’s own mother didn’t get to do that most of the time, but Merrill touched his hair like she touched the plants in her shop: careful and calm with a quiet sort of certainty that she knew what she was doing and her touch would bring no harm. Yeah, that didn’t even make sense to Tybalt but it worked and who was he to second guess?

“Oh Hawke,” she said. Her voice was rich in kindness and devoid of pity, like the touch of fresh grass under bare feet in spring. “If you know where he lives, I still have some of that itching powder from when Carver tried to prank Anders.”

Tybalt snorted despite himself.

“No,” he said, raising his head from the counter and straightening up. “It wasn’t like that. It was… I don’t know what it was.” Oh, he remembered it all so clearly, right up to the point where a screen had been erected between him and reality. Every time he insisted that there must have been something or someone behind them, he heard the excuse become a little more ridiculous. Yet, he clung to it more fiercely and insisted that it was the truth every time.

“So that’s a no on itching powder?” Merrill asked.

How could anyone sound that cheerfully innocent when offering horribly itchy vengeance like that. She really had spent too much time with Bethany. And Carver. Wait. Why did Merrill, of all people, have Carver’s leftover itching powder?

Tybalt looked at her, trying to discover a reason through appearance alone.

Merrill blinked at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Why did Carver leave his pranking stuff with you?” he asked.

For one very, very long moment, Merrill went completely still. Tybalt got the distinct feeling that he hadn’t been told the full story.

“Well, to be honest,” Merrill said and fidgeted. “Sometimes Carver wants to prank you too and he needs a place to keep his things when he’s visiting.”

“You were conspiring against me!” Tybalt accused her. “Conspiracy to commit pranks!”

Merrill remained suspiciously silent on the matter which, really, was all Tybalt needed to know. He knew his brother and, in a way, it was a relief that they had returned to pranking after the awkward mess of teenage years and anger.

For a moment, Tybalt felt happy, as if nothing had gone wrong, just talking with a friend and being overly dramatic over one of the things that was really a fact of life. The brief respite lasted for just a few seconds before reality came knocking again and Tybalt’s shoulders slumped under its weight.

“Hawke, you should call him,” Merrill said, catching on to the shift in Tybalt’s mood as soon as it happened.

“Why?”

“Because you’re miserable,” Mahariel’s voice cut in.

One of these days, Tybalt was going to put a bell on his boss and he meant that quite literally. Why were so many people around him so stealthy? It was unfair and bad on his nerves!

“I am not miserable,” Tybalt objected half-heartedly. “Merrill, tell him I’m not miserable.”

Merrill remained suspiciously quiet.

“Merrill!”

“He’s not wrong,” Merrill answered.

“Well- that- you-” Tybalt stammered, then groaned and slumped down against the counter again. “I can’t call him.”

“Why not?” Merrill asked as Mahariel moved past them to re-shelve some books.

Tybalt swore he had heard Mahariel snort.

“Because,” Tybalt insisted.

“Because what?”

“Because he’s the one who walked out on me. Because I don’t want to look needy. Because- because-” he cut himself off before he spilled anything else into the world, revealed anything that couldn’t be erased. Before he admitted that he was scared and worried and what if- what if all his desperate certainty of Fenris’s reasons was proved wrong?

It would be fantastic if his mind could just pick a line of thought and stick with it, that would be just fantastic, truly. That would be so helpful in actually coming up with a decision and going through with it.

“But Tyb-”

“No.” Tybalt tried to put every ounce of conviction his body possessed into that one word. Sadly, that wasn’t all that much to begin with. He heaved a deep sigh and raked a hand through his hair, making it stand up in gravity-defying angles that drew a short giggle from Merrill.

“I mean- I can’t do it, can I? Bethany got stood up once -” the worst thing anyone could do because his sister was awesome and wonderful and people should count themselves lucky to be allowed to spend time in her presence “- and she said that she wasn’t going to chase him. There was this long talk about self-respect and stuff.”

He remembered Bethany explaining that if the guy had a reason for not showing up, he could ‘drag himself over and explain it like a grown-up’.

“Hawke,” Merrill said in that very distinct tone people tended to adopt when they were about to explain some kind of subtleties in social interactions to him. “That’s different, isn’t it?”

“How?” asked Tybalt. “It doesn’t feel different. Well, we had the date. And he didn’t leave because he wanted to watch a game with some friends instead.” Tybalt twisted his fingers together. “What if there’s something going on that made him leave? What if he’s upset that I didn’t call him sooner?”

Ah. There it was. Sometimes it took Tybalt, who was used to most of the odd twists and turns his brain made, time to figure out why something didn’t quite click right in his head.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Merrill cheerfully supplied.

“Oh?”

“You call him!”

Tybalt sighed. “And if he’s upset with me?”

“Then there’s always itching powder.”

Tybalt laughed. His mood lightened for a moment. It was probably poor form to actually consider it. People were allowed to not like him without the threat of itchy vengeance hanging over their heads, but there was nothing wrong with briefly imagining it as long as he didn’t actually go through with it. Right? Right.

“Thanks, Merrill.” She might not have known the entire story, but in a way, Tybalt felt like her not knowing had helped. He hadn’t felt the need to defend Fenris and could, instead, just focus on his own waffling and feelings that flopped between being hurt and determined to give Fenris the benefit of the doubt.

Merrill’s face dimpled into a wide smile. “Always ready to help!” she chirped.

How lucky had he been to have finally found friends like the small group that had gathered around him?

“Right. I… eh…. I should help close up,” Tybalt decided, looking at Mahariel who loudly straightened the books on the shelves.

Mahariel understood a lot, stepped in whenever something became too much, but he still paid Tybalt to do his job, not to stand around and bemoan his love life or glare at customers. Time to get back to work then.

* * *

Decisions were evil, horrible things and if Tybalt still had that magic eight ball from his childhood, it would have been getting a work-out right around then. If it had just been a choice between calling and not calling, it would have been easy, but no. Of course it wasn’t just that. It was never just _that_ in this world. There were always implications to consider, people reading between the lines and finding things that weren’t even there in reality.

Tybalt had pondered whether he should ask anyone else for advice, but ultimately hadn’t. He was a grown man capable of making up his mind and doing what needed to be done. The plethora of bad choices in his youth did not mean he was barred from making any now.

He looked at the phone, huffed and glanced at Yarrow, whose paws were twitching in his sleep.

Being a dog couldn’t be such a bad life. Dogs didn’t have to deal with any of this nonsense.

“I’m going to call him,” Tybalt informed Yarrow.

Yarrow responded with a drawn out whine. The sides of his paws scrabbled over the floor, probably in attempt to catch a ball in his dreams.

“Thank you for your sincere and enthusiastic support, it means the world to me,” said Tybalt and turned his attention back to the phone. Right. Now would be great. Any moment now. But what if they called each other at exactly the same time? Maybe he should wait just a little longer. Maybe he could go and scrub the kitchen floor and then come back to call Fenris.

Right at the moment that that thought crossed his mind, Tybalt could practically hear his family and friends yelling at him to just make the call already and put everyone involved out of their misery.

Right then. Calling it was. The kitchen floor could wait. There was Fenris’s contact in Tybalt’s phone and there was Tybalt finger coming down. He could do this. No, don’t go for the return button. Nope. There’s a good finger. Way to go with the listening to his brain part. Well, the part of his brain that wasn’t longingly reminding Tybalt that maybe a spot of cleaning wouldn’t be that bad, or at least he could check his plants and possibly water a few.

No! He was Tybalt Hawke and he _liked_ Fenris. He was going to-

Oh god he’d done it.

Oh crap oh crap oh-

A mechanical voice chimed from the other side of the line, announcing that he had reached the voicemail belonging to the number he’d dialled. There wasn’t even a personal message, not even Fenris gruffly stating his name. Just a robotic voice.

That wasn’t right.

Tybalt yelped as the beep went off to signal he could speak. He hadn’t prepared for leaving a voicemail message and- and- and he really needed to say something now unless Fenris thought some weirdo was calling him. No. Wait. He should know Tybalt had called. He was in Fenris’s phone for crying out loud! Well, not him-him, but his number. Unless Fenris had deleted it and- Okay, stop it brain. Running around in panicky circles wasn’t going to help him.

He should really start talking now. Right. On with it, mouth. Do the talky wording bit.

“So- uhm- Fenris. I was kind of wondering- well- are you okay? I mean I haven’t heard from you and I just… I’m worried? About you, I mean. You left in such a hurry and you kind of disappeared. Unless I screwed up somehow and you don’t want to see me again. Just… please let me know if you’re okay? If you’re in trouble or if you need help with anything, I’m here for you. Please… just please call back soon? Or have Isabela call me. Anything.” Tybalt swallowed against the lump forming in his throat. “This is Tybalt, by the way. If you hadn't guessed. Tybalt Hawke.”

He hung up, with a sinking feeling in his gut.

Something wasn’t right about this.


	16. Chapter 16

Patience was a virtue that Tybalt had never got around to mastering. He could be patient enough with his plants and, occasionally, his friends and whatever harebrained scheme Anders or Varric had come up with this time. Granted, it wasn’t as if Aveline and Merrill didn’t come up with any of their own ‘oh my god what were you thinking’ plans, but those tended to be legal.

Except for that one time with the goat's blood and the mirror.

He still didn’t know why Merrill had thought that that had been a good idea. Ouija boards were one thing, but that? That had been a whole different bucket of creepy.

Tybalt did his best to be patient, but in the end, he lasted a day. Technically, less than a day. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours since he ended up on the phone with Fenris’s machine when he gave in. In his defense: his mind had been very busy conjuring up scenarios ranging from the one where Fenris had won a surprise cruise to the one where he was on the run from a rogue government agency (clearly Tybalt had spent too much time watching action films with Carver), or the one in which Fenris had been in an accident and lost his memory (Tybalt had known watching daytime TV with his mother while ill would haunt him for the rest of his life).

No matter what was real and what was just a product of Tybalt’s agitated, overactive imagination: he couldn’t wait any longer. The fact that he had made it until the end of his shift at work was nothing short of a miracle. Tybalt shot out of the store, Yarrow hot on his heels, and only paused to text Anders just in case he had food mooching plans. Anders would just have to get some take-out like he used to before they’d known each other, because Tybalt was going to track Fenris down.

Even if it was the last thing he did.

Okay, maybe it was not quite that dramatic, but he just needed to know what had happened. His best bet, he guessed, was go to where Fenris lived. If he was in luck, he could even run into Fenris, or maybe Isabela would be at home. Tybalt felt fairly confident that she wouldn’t actually devour him.

Fairly.

In the very worst case scenario, he consoled himself, no one would be home and Tybalt would be left without an answer. There was a line between stalker and concerned, a very big, thick, mile wide line, and Tybalt had no interest in crossing it.

The E.R. theme song rang from Tybalt’s pocket just as he clipped the leash on Yarrow’s collar. For a moment, Tybalt considered ignoring it, but the thought alone put a heavy feeling in his chest. Fine.

‘What are you gonna do?’ the text read.

‘Probably something ill-advised,’ Tybalt promptly replied even though he knew that that was just going to cause more questions.

‘Alibi or bail money?’

Okay, he hadn’t expected that question. Then again: this was Anders.

‘Hopefully neither.’ A restraining order if he had the world’s lousiest luck.

‘What?’

Should he answer honestly or make something up? Tybalt weighed his options but considering his skills at lying, he figured the truth was the best option in this case. At least Anders wouldn’t be able to catch up with him and stop him. Tybalt was the only person in their group who knew where Fenris lived, after all.

‘Going to see if Fenris is home. Am worried.’ He pocketed his phone and headed for the nearest bus stop.

* * *

Navigating the city was always a peculiar experience. Tybalt’s ability to get lost by leaving the known path for five minutes just to go around some construction work, for example, was legendary. At least it always gave Yarrow a good, long walk and new places to mark as his.

Tybalt couldn’t remember the names of streets. He could remember line numbers for the busses. He could remember which stop was his because of the house with the crooked window that was right before it or, another stop when he saw the old oak tree with an eye that had taken shape after the removal of a branch. He remembered the bus stop near Fenris’s building because he remembered Fenris leaning across to press the stop button just as they passed a worn down and rusty bench .

He remembered the way Fenris had smelled too: toothpaste and cheap shampoo as a thin layer over a warm smell that was close to saffron but not quite, and so uniquely Fenris that Tybalt was certain he would remember it for years to come.

Tybalt pressed stop and scratched Yarrow behind his ears.

“We’ll go home soon,” he promised the dog. He wasn’t the only one pushing back dinner, after all, and Yarrow hadn’t had a say in it. He could get Yarrow a big new bone to chew on as an apology later.

The bus jerked to a halt. Tybalt put his hand out on the seat in front of him to keep his face from smashing into it. The last thing he needed right then was a trip to the emergency room because the bus broke his nose. Knowing his luck, Anders would be there. He would never hear the end of it then. Ill-advised plans thwarted by public transportation, of all things.

“C’mon,” he mumbled to Yarrow, quickly shuffling out of the bus. Wouldn’t want to keep the driver waiting too long and annoy him or the other passengers. They all had places to go, people to see, things to do. He wouldn’t want to hold them up.

Hopping out of the bus, Tybalt looked around in an attempt to get his bearings.

He really should have thought this one through a bit more thoroughly.

Well, that piece of graffiti seemed familiar. It just had a few extra expletives spray painted across it.

“That way, I think,” he told Yarrow, who huffed in reply. Clearly, they were both bursting with confidence about this venture.

It turned out that, in fact, it was not that way. Or two of the other ways Tybalt tried after that. It turned out that while the piece of graffiti was familiar, it was because they had turned away from it and gone in the exact opposite direction.

Tybalt’s stomach growled. Dinner was going to have to wait a little longer. He hadn’t come this far to give up now just because he was hungry. Maybe he’d be able to grab a sandwich or something quick at Fenris’s place. Provided Fenris was there and actually wanted to see Tybalt.

The staircase to the building was almost exactly as he remembered it. Except for the puddle of what Tybalt hoped was soda or something on one step. He eyed it with a suspicion usually reserved for emails announcing that he had a very rich uncle who had passed away — Tybalt knew of only one uncle and while Gamlen was many things rich was not one of them. He skipped that step altogether and warned Yarrow when the dog tried to get a closer sniff of the liquid.

“No, Yarrow,” he warned the dog. “We don’t know what’s swimming around in there.”

Yarrow turned his head away regretfully and followed his human up the stairs.

Tybalt stopped in front of the door — he recognized the dents and scuff marks at the bottom — and hesitated, hand halfway to the door and ready to buzz the doorbell.

Please, he shot off a little prayer to whatever would listen to him and act in his best interest as opposed to mucking his life up even further just for kicks and giggles. Please, let this end without the police being brought into this. He had been doing so well on that aspect of his life, and Varric would never let him live it down.

Just… please.

He rang the doorbell and waited.

And waited.

Yarrow sat down and yawned.

Tybalt waited some more. He glanced at his watch. Three minutes. No reply. Well, maybe Fenris was just using the bathroom or taking a shower or something. That was possible, right? Right. He could wait a little longer.

Yarrow lay down and yawned.

Tybalt steadfastly kept standing and occasionally glanced at his watch. Five minutes. Very well. He could try one more time and then just leave. One more time wouldn’t be creepy or clingy or any other negative word that ended on a y.

Heels hit the stairs below.

The second attempt was exactly as successful as the first. Tybalt sighed as his stomach growled. Perhaps he should admit defeat and try again tomorrow. Chasing across the city on an empty stomach wouldn’t do anyone any favors, not to mention that collapsing from fatigue would not just get the police but probably a hospital involved as well.

Look at him, being all responsible!

“Hey! You’re Fenris’s guy, right?” a woman called behind him, much too close and loud. Her voice echoed from the walls.

Tybalt whirled around and gaped. A distant part of him wondered how anyone managed to squeeze into something that tight. The adjacent section of his mind decided that he didn’t want to actually know that.

“I’m not- that- I mean-” Tybalt whirled around to Isabela’s laughter.

“Oh relax before you choke on something that isn’t Fenris.” She cackled as she took the last step up. “What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you and Fenris be making use of every flat surface in sight?”

Tybalt blinked. What did that even mean?

“I… uhm… Fenris? I mean. I came to see if Fenris is alright?”

“You mean he isn’t at your place?”

An icy cold claw reached into Tybalt’s chest and clawed through his insides. Every worst possible scenario came screaming back to life in his head. Everything from ‘I scared Fenris into ditching and running’ to ‘Fenris ended up in a ditch and now he’s dead because I dawdled around too long’.

“Hey, you doing alright? You kinda look like you’re about to keel over,” Isabela asked.

He felt like he was going to keel over. His mouth felt dry and he found himself reaching for Yarrow. Fine, calm down, there was probably a completely reasonable explanation for it.

“I’m fine, really. Fine. All the fine. I… uh… does he do this often? Take off like this?” Tybalt asked.

Isabela frowned and shook her head.

“Not since I’ve known him.”

That was not the answer Tybalt had been hoping for.

Isabela pushed past him and opened the door. She barged into her apartment, pausing in the hallway. “Well? What are you waiting for? A written invitation?”

“What are we going to do?” Tybalt asked, eyes wide and, he imagined, not unlike those of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi-truck.

“Looking in his room. See if he took his stuff.”

That didn’t feel right. Wasn’t this a gross invasion of Fenris’s privacy? It felt like it would be, but Isabela was of a different mind and Tybalt found himself following her. He reached for his beads and clicked them together. The place looked roughly like Tybalt remembered it. Different items were scattered throughout. An art book laid open on the coffee table and a pair of discarded socks hung over the back of a dining room chair.

Isabela dropped her bag on the couch and marched straight on through to Fenris’s room.

At least she didn’t seem as bothered with Yarrow’s presence this time around.

Fenris’s room displayed a sort of military precision and cleanliness that not even Carver, the only person Tybalt knew who was actually in the military, seemed to have. Even the plants were neatly lined up. His sheets were straight, not even a wrinkle. There were no posters on the wall. Tybalt noted a flyer on the windowsill next to the oregano that Tybalt had given Fenris. Edging closer revealed that it was a flyer on dyslexia.

“His clothes are still here,” Isabela announced from Tybalt’s left. She’d opened the closet, displaying sparse, but neatly folded piles of clothes.

Tybalt could feel his grasp on his calm slipping as worry gnawed relentlessly at him.

Wrong. Wrong. Something was so very wrong.

He swallowed, trying to wrestle the steadily growing panic down. That wouldn’t help him and, even worse, if Fenris was in trouble it would only delay Tybalt’s attempts to find him. Tybalt half stumbled out of the room. Yarrow followed him close.

“What are you doing?” Isabela called.

“His plants need water.” The words were just this side of clumsy and unwieldy on Tybalt’s tongue.

Breathe. Just breathe.

He found the kitchen, grabbed the first mug that looked like it didn’t have a layer of old coffee congealing at the bottom and filled it with water.

“What are you- you’re actually worried about his plants right now?” Isabela asked. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed and a confused frown on her face. Tybalt squeezed past her, doing his best not to touch. Now, of all times, he definitely did not need people touching him even on accident.

“No,” he answered and heard his voice go flat. “But I need to calm down before I can think. This is me calming down.”

“But-”

“Can you just give me a moment?” That came out harsher than he had expected, but he didn’t know Isabela as anyone other than Fenris’s roommate and wasn’t in the mood to go into details or give an autism 101 lecture.

He’d apologize later.

Taking a deep breath, Tybalt turned and focused on the few plants in Fenris’s room. They didn’t need much work. Tybalt could tell that Fenris had been doing his best to tend to them until a few days ago. He checked the soil, the leaves and ran his fingers along the stalks. For a moment, that was all there was in his world. Just the small, organized rituals that came with tending to plants.

His thoughts returned to order, worry nothing more than a persistent whisper. He could think like this. Very well. Who did he know who had a lot of contacts through the city and a good enough standing with those people to get answers?

Varric. Of course.

Varric, who knew people in every place of the city in the name of research. Varric, who could meet someone and have them laughing and paying for drinks in minutes. If anyone had any idea where Fenris could be or what was going on, Varric should be able to find them.

With the plants tended to, his mind calmed as much as it was going to, Tybalt turned around to find Isabela still watching him. He couldn’t read the expression on her face. He didn’t know what kind of arch of her brows meant concern or suspicion or what kind of twitch to her lips meant amusement.

“You haven’t seen Fenris since before he went out with me?” Tybalt asked, just to check.

Isabela’s face did a thing where a shadow crossed her eyes and and her brows dipped into what Tybalt wanted to call a displeased frown.

“Yeah,” she answered. “What’s going on?”

“No idea but-” Tybalt said and fished his phone out of his pocket, “-I’m gonna find out.”

If he was just being paranoid — and part of Tybalt hoped he was — it would come to light soon enough and he could rest, but on the slight chance that he wasn’t… he’d never be able to forgive himself for giving up this easily.

He quickly scrolled to Varric’s contact information and rang.

“Y’hello, Varric here. If you’re my agent: I’m writing. If you’re not my agent: I’m writing or my agent will eat me - not in the fun way.”

That… yeah. That was not what Tybalt had been hoping for. He gave the phone a look of complete and utter betrayal. There was no telling how long Varric would be incommunicado when he was on these writing jags, which left him with his second and least favourite option.

Carver, Bethany and Aveline would _kill_ him if they found out about this.

If Fenris needed help, could Tybalt afford to pass this chance despite the risk to Tybalt himself? Despite the chance of letting all his old mistakes come roaring back to life and make him pay for what he escaped.

“Isabela, you want to find out what happened to Fenris, right?”

“Of course,” she answered. “Gotta know if I need to find a new roommate.”

Tybalt looked at her, not certain if she were serious or masking what she felt behind practical words. People did that too much in this world.

“Can you come with me?” he asked. “There’s someone who might have an idea if Fenris really is in trouble but I can’t go there on my own. I… I have a history there.”

His fingers tugged rhythmically on his beads.

Isabela nodded.

“Yeah, sure. Where are we going?”

“The Den,” Tybalt said and swallowed. “I need to speak with Athenril.”


	17. Chapter 17

It was still too early for the neon lights to illuminate the street like they had been in Tybalt’s memories. It changed everything and turned the wide street with clubs into a dismal sight. He couldn’t remember why he, at one point in his life, had thought that this place could be a home. Then again, he’d been eighteen and angry with everything and everyone.

He kept Yarrow close on the leash. The last time Tybalt had been here, there had been no Yarrow in his life yet.

Isabela walked just behind Tybalt, her heels slamming solidly into the ground with every step.

Tybalt wished that he’d called Aveline, but she would have either talked him out of this or come with him. Either way, he wouldn’t have got the answers he needed. He didn’t want either Merrill or Anders to see him here either. He’d worked so hard to move on that he was loath to bring his past into present friendships.

“Stick close to me,” Tybalt said.

Isabela scoffed.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I can take care of myself,” Isabela drawled, but with a sharp sting hidden in her tone.

Blinking, Tybalt went back to what he said. How had she interpreted- Oh. Oooh. Right.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He pulled at his beads. “I meant for my sake. The last time I met Athenril we… uh… didn’t part on the best of terms.” More like on terms that included a bloody nose and teeth, split lips and bruised knuckles. At least Aveline had had his back. She always had. How could he have been so foolish as to think for even a second that she wouldn’t?

“You know her?” Isabela asked and, really, Hawke couldn’t fault her for her audible surprise.

People always wanted to believe someone like him couldn’t possibly be involved in anything criminal. Autistic people were supposed to fit in a neat little box, and knowing a person like Athenril did not fit in those confines.

“We’re all capable of making mistakes,” Tybalt said and came to a halt in front of a bar. The letters above the door would light up in bright green come nightfall and draw attention to The Den. The sign on the door said that it was still closed, but Tybalt could pick up on the faint music playing inside.

She’d be here. In their own ways, they had both been creatures of habit. Neither of them had liked change back then and Tybalt was willing to bet that she hadn’t changed that much in that aspect.

Taking one deep breath, Tybalt pushed the door open and counted on Isabela to follow.

The room was brightly lit, adding an almost surreal veneer to the club. It was one of those places that people never imagined to exist in full light, where there were no dark corners to hide in and no strangely coloured lights to make the patrons look faintly otherworldly. It was just a large room with a dance floor, a bar and booths to the side. The cleaning agents bit into Tybalt’s nose and he angled his gaze downwards.

He had grown since he had last set foot in this place. They did not need to know that. Not even Athenril would have wasted manpower on keeping an eye on him in the years since they had parted ways.

He wasn’t the only one who had changed, though.

The club looked cleaner and bigger than he remembered, but then as Athenril’s business has undoubtedly grown it was only logical that she invested some of her gains in the club she called her base of operations.

Apparently, Tybalt realized as a pair of rather sizable feet stepped into view, those investments included some kind of guards. Isabela was close behind Tybalt

“We’re closed,” a man said with a deep, heavy voice. “Leave.”

The ‘or else’ was thick in those words.

Tybalt looked up, letting his gaze fly briefly over the man’s face. If he weren’t so damned big, the guy would have been utterly forgettable, just another guy in the crowd.

“I’m here to see Athenril,” Tybalt said and focused his sight right over the man’s left shoulder. He didn’t remember that wall being that particular shade of slate gray.

The man snorted.

“Come back later.”

“Hey,” Isabela’s voice snapped out before Tybalt could compose a reply. “We’re here to see Athenril, piss off unless you want to test your luck.”

Tybalt glanced sideways, catching the sharp-edged grin on her face and the way she jutted her chin out as if she wanted the guy to make a move, and, right then, Tybalt believed with all his heart that Isabela would be able to not just take the guy down but make him cry for his mother as well.

She’d probably go for the groin if the guy decided to keep on being this uncooperative. Tybalt resolved that if given the choice, he would do all he could to keep Isabela from getting angry with him.

“Just tell Athenril that Tybalt is here to see her,” Tybalt said. If at all possible, he wanted to try and resolve this without violence. That was part of the reason why he hadn’t called Aveline. Well, that and she was a police officer. He wouldn’t want to make her choose between her duties and what she felt was her responsibility to him.

The man sneered, showing teeth that look so white that Tybalt wanted to check if they weren’t plastic. He doubted that the guard would appreciate Tybalt knocking on his teeth. By the looks of it, the guy might even bite.

“No,” the guard answered.

Tybalt felt a slow throbbing pain set in at the base of his skull. He had no time for this sort of foolishness! The longer he took here, the longer it would be before he knew what had become of Fenris and if Fenris needed help. He didn’t trust the way Isabela’s hand oh so very casually strayed to her side.

Did she have a weapon on her?

Oh no.

Oooh no.

That would end poorly, at best.

“Athenril!” Tybalt yelled as loudly as he could manage before anyone could draw weapons and start a bloodbath. There was only one guard in front of them, but there would be more than enough to finish them off. “Athenril! It’s Tybalt! Speak with me, you owe me!”

His heart pounded in his chest and felt as if it was slowly clawing its way up into his throat. This was going to end badly. This was going to end so very, _very_ badly.

A door at the back of the club opened. Tybalt held his breath.

Athenril was short, but had a way of commanding the room that made people feel as if she were ten feet tall and in no mood for jokes. She sauntered in, easy as she pleased as if she owned the place. She did in all but name. He had been so impressed with her easy confidence once.

She only stopped when she was right in front of him, close enough that her perfume added to his headache.

“Well, look who came back,” she drawled. “Didn’t think you’d have the guts to show up around here again.”

Calm. Calm. Stay calm. There was no allowance for weakness. If he caved, even just a little, she would pounce. She had never been an ally and he was no longer her marionette.

His gaze kept flitting around, taking in the men and women who had followed Athenril. Some faces looked familiar, others were new. No one seemed happy to see him. He hadn’t expected anything better. He swallowed, fortified his resolve and forced himself to ever so briefly look her in the eyes.

He managed for just a moment.

“I came for information,” he said. “I didn’t come back.”

He had never been able to read her, in that Athenril had been no different from the vast majority of people Tybalt knew. She seemed more distant now, or maybe she had always been and his desperation to belong and be accepted had made him paint a different picture in his mind.

Athenril laughed, a short, sharp sound that had never been meant to carry joy.

“You’re in no position to make demands,” she told him.

Even in her worn and tattered jeans, sneakers that had seen better years, and a faded band T-shirt, she was still visibly in charge. She had no need for a sharp suit or leather pants or high heels to display her dominance, though Tybalt remembered her pulling those looks off quite well in the past.

“Now now,” Isabela tutted, “is that a way to greet an old friend? Hawke, I thought you two had a history.”

Tybalt thanked whoever was listening for Isabela. Her comment had drawn Athenril’s attention away from Tybalt and he felt as if he could breathe again.

“And who’s this?” Athenril asked.

Even though Tybalt knew that telepathic abilities did not exist — at least he hoped so because otherwise he had a lot of apologies to make to those poor telepaths who had picked up on him — he still tried his best to think loudly at Isabela that she should not give Athenril her name.

It didn’t work.

“I’m Isabela.” She stretched the syllables out in an amused tone that hid the white hot edge of a blade. “And we’re here because of a friend.”

Athenril snorted.

“Hawke has no friends here,” said she. “If he had even an ounce of self preservation, he’d know that much.”

He knew she meant this as an insult. Those words always were. As he looked around, however, and saw the people gathered he couldn’t help but compare to the friends he had gained, Tybalt realized that they didn’t feel like one.

Did Athenril know that?

Hopefully not. The more leverage she thought that she had on him, the less likely she was to do something like order a number of her people to introduce Tybalt’s face to the nearest curb. Repeatedly. It wouldn’t be the first time that she had that done to someone.

“You owe me,” Tybalt said quietly. His fingernails dug into the palms of his hand.

Athenril barked out a laugh.

“Owe you?” she repeated. “Owe you? You got to walk away. We didn’t bother you. I don’t owe you one damned thing.”

She took another step closer until they were almost nose to nose, or would have been, except Athenril was a good head shorter than him. Tybalt fought the urge to step back or reach for Yarrow.

“We took you in, gave you a place and something to make you worthwhile and you threw that away, but now you come back after all these years claiming I owe you? Your head’s gotta be more twisted up than I thought.”

“Hey!” Isabela snapped, stepping forward. Hawke could see three men and two women reaching for their weapons as she did so. Terrible odds. He could take out maybe one before they got him, two if Yarrow got involved even though he hoped his dog wouldn’t. “Are you just going to keep acting like a scorned ex, because we can just leave you with a pint of ice cream and be on our way.”

Athenril gave Isabela a look that made Tybalt want to step in between the two, if only to prevent Athenril from trying to kill Isabela for talking to her like that.

“The fact that I’m curious about why you’re here is the only reason you’re still inside instead of getting a quick course on what happens to people who annoy me,” Athenril pointed out.

“Oh yeah-” Tybalt could almost feel Isabela roll her eyes “-I’m scared now.”

Tybalt coughed, drawing attention back to him before he had to explain to Fenris why he’d got his roommate killed.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” he said. “He disappeared a few days ago.”

She didn’t need to know that the label was far from accurate.

Athenril gave him a long, considering look.

“Why would I know where your friend ran off to?” she finally asked.

“He works here. Bartender with the white hair and white line tattoos.” Tybalt gestured at the bar. Even pointing seemed to make Athenril’s people twitch. He supposed when someone was as involved in the drug and gun trade in the city as she was these days, twitchiness was to be expected.

Athenril’s eyes narrowed just a fraction.

“You’ve seen him,” Tybalt concluded.

“Yeah,” Athenril answered after a moment of silence. “Came in yesterday, wanted me to provide him with something.”

She didn’t tell him what. Of course she didn’t. Why show all her cards when she could annoy him holding back? Tybalt bristled.

“Usually I don’t mind when a pretty lady beats around the bush,” Isabela said and Tybalt had the sneaking suspicion that there might be an underlying meaning there that he didn’t catch. “But I’m running out of patience here. What did he want and where did he go?” She bit out the last few words, losing the last bit of the playful drawl.

Athenril smirked. That was never a good sign.

“He came for a gun. Desperate for it too. He paid in cash up front.”

For a moment, Tybalt’s heart felt as if it stopped beating altogether and he hoped and prayed that the next part out of Athenril’s mouth would involve her giving Fenris one bullet.

“I was supposed to send one of my guys with it to him today, but since you’re so desperate to see him, why don’t you go and bring it instead and get out of my hair?” she suggested.

This was easy. Too easy. He’d been a part of this game just long enough to know that there was always an angle. He couldn’t see it right now, but it was there. Tybalt grit his teeth. He couldn’t say no or back out, could he? This could be his only shot of tracking Fenris down, finding out why he needed the gun and why he’d disappeared after their date.

Athenril had him pinned down and by the look of the smirk on her face, Tybalt realized that she knew it too. He hated her for that.

Tybalt glanced quickly at Isabela from the corner of his eye, trying to see or guess if she was in for the long haul. He should have known better. As a stranger to him, Tybalt couldn’t read her nearly as well as he’d learned to understand his friends. Still, he thought he saw the slightest of nods, and that would have to do.

“We’ll do it,” Tybalt said, “but we’ll owe you nothing for the information.”

Athenril laughed, dry and humourless. “So suspicious.”

“I know you,” replied Tybalt.

“Oh, I doubt it.” She shook her head, then gestured at a young man — barely older than Tybalt had been when he had stood by Athenril’s side though he doubted the boy had a friend like Aveline — standing a little to her left. “Go get the gun.”

The gun itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but its weight felt familiar in Tybalt’s hand in ways he didn’t want it to. As they walked out of the club, part of Tybalt wanted nothing more than to turn around and make sure they wouldn’t be jumped, but they made it out unchallenged.

Isabela and Tybalt didn’t speak as they walked down the street. Tybalt was all too aware of the gun, though it was now sealed away in a case in the bag he held.

The silence didn’t last around the corner.

“Alright, I have to ask,” Isabela all but blurted out. “How does someone like you know someone like her well enough for us to walk in and out in one piece?”

He supposed that he owed Isabela an answer there. He’d put her at risk as well, after all.

“I was a very angry teenager,” he said. “Athenril’s gang wasn’t this, well, big then, but she had a way of making you feel like her people were the only ones who would accept you, who would be a home to you. So when I ran away after my father died, I ended up with her.”

“Huh. And I’m going to guess you weren’t there to play mascot?”

“Definitely not.”

“Did not expect that one,” Isabela said.

Tybalt snorted. Most people didn’t and, to be honest, he was glad of it. It had been easier to move on that way.

“You know we’re probably walking into a trap, right?” Isabela moved on to the next question.

Tybalt nodded.

“Yeah. Knowing Athenril that went way too easily for it to not come back and bite us in the ass.” He ruffled Yarrow’s fur for comfort. “Are you still up for this?”

Isabela looked at him, then nodded. “Yeah. She's already seen my face, even if I chicken out now she's still going to come looking for me.”


	18. Chapter 18

This was spectacularly boring. Tybalt slumped back in his seat in the car Isabela had borrowed from some friend whose name Tybalt hadn’t caught. Yarrow had sprawled out over the backseat and Isabela sat in the driver’s seat, sipping her coffee. Tybalt still thought the over-sized sunglasses were a bit much.

“How long have we been here now?” Tybalt asked, shifting left to right and back again in his seat.

“Three minutes since the last time you asked,” Isabela answered in between sips.

“Oh.” Tybalt looked at her for a second before his eyes settled on heels both long and pointy enough to qualify as a lethal weapon. “Why do you wear shoes like that?”

Isabela pushed her sunglasses up with her pinky finger and arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow at Tybalt.

“Because, sweet thing, they make my ass look amazing.” She paused. “Well, more amazing than it already is. I don’t do those squats for the fun of it, you know.”

“But don’t they hurt?” He remembered Bethany complaining after just a day in heels that weren’t even half as high.

Isabela shrugged.

“Nothing you can’t get used to and, besides, sometimes a little pain can be a lot of fun.” The dip in her tone sent fire shooting up Tybalt’s cheeks and he turned quickly to look straight ahead. Isabela’s laughter filled the car. “Oh, you are a precious one. Almost makes me sad that Fenris found you first.”

Almost, not quite.

“I… ah… thank you?” What was he supposed to say to that?

It earned him another bout of laughter from Isabela.

“You’re very cheerful despite everything that’s going on,” Tybalt said, desperate to change the topic of conversation to something less likely to make his head explode.

“You mean like confronting a gang leader on her turf and delivering a gun to my disappeared roommate?”

“Yeah. Sorta.” Tybalt spun one of his beads rapidly on its string.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am still throttling Fenris for doing this, but that’s then. Until then I’m sitting in a car, having mediocre coffee and bored out of my skull. I’ve had worse.” She lowered her sunglasses again and slumped a little further in her seat.

Tybalt stomped on the urge to remind her of posture and what sitting like that would do to her back. This was neither the time nor the place for that. He shifted in his seat and focused on the corner where they were supposed to meet Fenris. Plenty of people rushed around, but no Fenris.

He drummed his fingers on his leg and tried to will Fenris into appearing. He really needed to start working on obtaining telekinesis or telepathy or whatever it was that would let him will things into happening.

Tybalt opened his mouth to ask something.

“If you ask me what the time is again,” Isabela cut him off before he could utter a word, “I will feed you a clock.”

“But-”

“I will literally buy a clock.”

Tybalt pondered if it was worth the risk to ask Isabela how long it had been or if she would actually make true on her threat to make him eat a clock. He didn’t think that that was physically possible unless it was either a small clock, like maybe a watch without the bands or if she wanted to take the time and break the clock into small parts first. It still didn’t sound like it was something that fit into a healthy diet unless you were a robot.

Did that count as cannibalism?

Wait. What was he thinking about? How was this his brain?

He shook his head to clear it from any residual robotic cannibalism thoughts and focused back on the corner. A man paused there and for a moment, Tybalt was ready to dismiss him as just another passer by, until he realised that under the coat that was easily two sizes too big and a beanie that obscured his hair. But that slouch, the way he man hunched his shoulders that looked, at first glance like plain bad posture but was actually a stance that would let the man burst into motion at a second’s notice.

Tybalt recognised that posture.

He remembered it from the first time Fenris had entered the bookstore, how he’d stood there dripping wet from the rain.

He moved before he even realised it, sliding out of the car and moving towards Fenris. A blur of brown fur flashed past him towards Fenris and then proceeded to bounce excitedly around Fenris and bark. Yarrow had this deep, booming bark that felt more like a wall of sound was coming at whoever he was barking at. Yarrow’s entire back half seemed to wriggle along with his excited wagging.

Fenris froze, looking at the dog in shock before he lifted his head and his gaze locked with Tybalt’s. For a second, a flood of emotions washed over his face in quick succession. Some, Tybalt could identify — surprise, happiness, pain. Others were completely foreign to him.

Tybalt stalled, four steps away from Fenris. The bag with the gun felt impossibly heavy in his hands.

Fenris didn’t look injured, but people could be very good at hiding that.

“Hawke,” Fenris said. His face smoothed over to something painfully blank and distant.

Tybalt swallowed.

“Fenris I-” For a second, Tybalt’s breath caught in his throat. “- “I was worried. You disappeared and I…”

Fenris’s eyes flickered to the box in Tybalt’s hands. For a moment, the blank distant look disappeared as he realized what Tybalt was holding and raw, old pain swept over his face. Fenris blinked and the look was gone.

“How did you get that?” he asked. The cautious tone to his voice all but broke Tybalt’s heart.

Tybalt closed his eyes, swallowed, and squared his shoulders. There would be no backing down this time around.

“I told you that I knew Athenril,” he tried to explain. “I was worried about you, so I asked her.”

“I left for good reason, Hawke. You have no idea what’s going on here, what I’m-”

“So tell me!”

Why did this have to be so difficult? He just wanted to help, to know Fenris was safe, what he needed this gun for.

“Was it- was it something I did? Did I do something wrong?” Intellectually, Tybalt knew he couldn’t have done anything that warranted Fenris abandoning his home and getting a gun, but standing here with Fenris putting this wall between them brought that doubt back to life.

“You did not- I was happy. For a moment, I was happy with you, but I cannot put you at risk.” Fenris shook his head and squared his shoulders as if he was steeling himself.

Tybalt took a step forward. His heart performed a cautious little leap when Fenris didn’t back away. Another step. Fenris stood rooted to his spot on the pavement. Another step.

“Please.” Even Tybalt could detect the pleading tone of his own voice. “Just tell me. If you’re doing this to keep me out of trouble, I at least deserve to know what the trouble is.”

“He kinda has a point there,” Isabela’s voice suddenly joined in, just behind Tybalt. He was too worried that Fenris would run off if he looked away to glance back and see how closeby Isaebla was. “Oh don’t give me that look. You owe me rent.”

Her words sounded so uncaring but after having spent time in the car with Isabela, it felt more as if whenever Isabela said something there was something missing in her words. Almost like a sum that came out wrong because a number had disappeared somewhere, or an iceberg where he could only see the very tip but had the sneaking suspicion that there was a great mass under the surface.

Fenris looked around as if he expected people to come jumping from cars or shadows at any moment while Yarrow slobbered on his hand. He sighed, shoulders sagging just a touch.

“I can’t,” he said. It sounded desperate now, as if he were clinging to a last shred of conviction that was already starting to slip from his grasp. “I have been selfish and I cannot continue on on that road. I cannot risk you.”

Tybalt reached out, bumping his fingers against the back of Fenris’s hand and when Fenris didn’t pull away, took a risk and turned his hand to grab Fenris’s and squeeze lightly.

“You can’t make that decision for me. Can’t you let me chose?” he asked and hoped that he was getting through to Fenris.

“If something were to happen to you-”

“I can take care of myself,” Tybalt promised.

Fenris looked over Tybalt’s shoulder at Isabela.

“Hey, don’t look at me. You know how the last guy who tried to mess with me ended up.”

Tybalt’s mind painted a picture of a guy picking his teeth up from the floor. That seemed to be about Isabela’s style. Or she could do something very painful with those heels of hers. Maybe he should ask her for pointers, come to think of it, just not ones that involved wearing heels like that. Tybalt was willing to bet that those would not play nice with his sensory issues.

“You are serious about this?” Fenris asked.

All Tybalt could do was nod, relief flooding him. Finally. He knew that he couldn’t force Fenris to talk, and that if Fenris had insisted on not telling Tybalt about what was going on Tybalt would have had to back off eventually. He couldn’t describe the sense of thankfulness that flooded him when it didn’t come that far.

“Very well, but not out here.” He looked around again with that same cautious, suspicious look.

With Fenris’s hand still in his, Tybalt turned to Isabela, who shrugged.

“We can just go back to our place,” she suggested.

“No,” Fenris shook his head. “That would not be safe. The risk of someone following me…”

“Oh come _on_ ,” Isabela cried out loudly enough to draw a few looks from bypassers. “Do you really think they don’t know where you live? You left all your crap in your room.”

For a moment, Fenris stared at Isabela, and an expression crossed his face as if he felt like kicking himself. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

“Be that as it may, there is somewhere closer by and probably safer for the moment,” he suggested.

Tybalt chewed his bottom lip in thought and turned to check on Isabela to see if she was fine with the plan.

“Oh fine, if you wanna be stubborn-” Tybalt stifled the urge to point out to Isabela she was perfectly capable of being stubborn herself “-we can go to this magical land of privacy and secrecy of yours.”

Tybalt looked back to Fenris, unable to keep a smile from his face. They weren’t being shut out. Only then did he realize he was still holding Fenris’s hand. His gaze snapped down to their hands and saw their fingers still tangled together. His heart flopped giddily in his chest.

“Right, right, if you two lovebirds are done. Fenris, you’re riding in the back with the slobber machine,” Isabela cut in and jabbed her thumb back over her shoulder and at the borrowed car.

* * *

The ‘secure place’ Fenris had spoken off turned out to be a building that had been empty long enough for taggers to have layered graffiti over graffiti. It was boarded up with fences placed around it. Tybalt hoped that whoever owned the lot was probably planning to tear it down sooner or later. It looked rather like a glorified death trap ready to hand out gift bags filled with rusty nails and tetanus to any and all who entered.

Which was them.

Were his shots up to date? Catching some kind of horrible, painful and probably fatal disease would be right in line with the way his life had been going as of late.

“Fenris? Have you been living here the past few days?” Tybalt sidestepped something that he expected had been a dead bird a long time ago.

“I have been in worse places,” Fenris answered. “Though the last time I used this building, it wasn’t this run down.”

Right.

Isabela passed by them and poked at a door post. While Tybalt wasn’t anywhere near an expert on construction, he still didn’t think that something should crumble quite like that.

“Just how much trouble are you in?” Tybalt blurted and promptly wished he had remembered this thing called tact that people always talked about. “I… uh… I mean… it’s cozy looking?”

Sort of. In another universe. Where garbage dump sites were considered the height of indoor decorating. It even smelled as if there were several dead somethings right in the smelly part of decomposition. How anyone could live here was beyond Tybalt, but maybe he had been lucky that, even when he’d run away from his home, he’d still ended up with a roof over his head. At least the privacy thing was well taken care of. No one in their right mind would willingly enter this building, which left Tybalt wondering about them and the state of their minds.

Fenris arched an eyebrow at Tybalt, but said nothing of his comment. Instead, he took position next to a boarded up window and ducked just so he could look outside through a crack in the wood. His stance hadn’t relaxed once since Tybalt had spotted him outside on that corner.

“Now will you tell us or are you just going to stand there and look pretty?” Isabela demanded, voicing the impatience that Tybalt still struggled with.

Fenris didn’t look away from the window. Tybalt hesitated, torn between wanting to go to Fenris and worrying that he might need some space. In the end, he stood halfway through the room and kept Yarrow close to his side.

“Fenris-” Isabela started again.

“I owe someone money,” Fenris said. “A lot of money.”

“I’m going to guess that that someone isn’t a bank,” Tybalt said.

“No.” Fenris snorted drily, without even a shred of humour. “He is definitely not a bank.”

“Are you kidding me?” Isabela burst out. “This is all because you owe someone money?!”

That did draw Fenris’s attention away from the window for a moment.

“This is not just anyone. This is Danarius and he will stop at nothing to get back what is his .”

A complete hush fell over the room. The only sounds were coming from outside. Tybalt’s mind did its best impression of running around like a headless chicken. Fenris couldn’t mean _that_ Danarius, could he? There had to be tons of guys out there with parents cruel enough to give their kid that name. Fenris couldn’t definitely not mean the same man that Aveline regularly got into a frothing rage over because everyone knew he was a criminal but no one could prove it. For one thing, Fenris was still alive, and as far as Tybalt knew people who displeased that Danarius had a tendency to disappear.

Well.

Not all of them,

Some of them were found. Just… in a grotesque jigsaw sort of way.

Tybalt felt the urge to sit down come over him. They were so screwed. They were so deeply in over their heads. In fact, Tybalt would be happily surprised if they all still had heads by the end of this nightmare. How did this even happen? Maybe, if he were lucky, this would just be some kind of extended nightmare.

“How the hell are you still breathing?” Isabela blurted out what Tybalt was thinking and he was grateful for her saving him from having to ask it instead.

Fenris smirked, sharp and quick.

“Effort and creativity,” he answered. “Though possible not for much longer.”

Tybalt raked a hand through his hair. Great. So it was, indeed, that Danarius.

“Can’t you give the money back?” he asked, hopeful despite knowing better. Athenril wouldn’t let people get away with stealing from her either, not even if they returned the stolen goods. He had witnessed the results of that once too often to delude himself, and while Athenril was no one to mess with, the stories Tybalt had heard from Aveline about all that they suspected Danarius of made Danarius so much more dangerous.

They were so very, very screwed. Dead, even.

Carver had better not make a powerpoint presentation for his funeral, Tybalt though for a brief, surreal second.

Both Isabela and Fenris stared at Tybalt for a second as if they weren’t quite sure what to make of him.

“I cannot. I do not have it anymore,” Fenris said after scraping his throat. “I needed it to help my sister and mother escape his reach before I left his organisation.”

That made sense.

“I saw someone who works for Danarius, that night I left. Do you see why I tried to disappear? I cannot keep running, but I refuse to put people who are not directly involved with this in danger and I will not blame you for walking away now,” Fenris continued.

Tybalt swallowed. That could be the smartest thing to do, definitely the safest, but he looked at Fenris and realised one thing: he couldn’t back off now.

“I know,” Tybalt answered, surprised at how steady his voice sounded. “But I’m not going to. I don’t know what you’re planning, but I want to help.”

They both looked to Isabela, who threw her hands up in the air.

“Fine, fine. I came this far. So, what’s the plan?”

Fenris and Tybalt exchanged a look and Tybalt nodded.

“We fight,” Fenris said.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violence (though only part of the chapter)

As nice and dramatic ‘we fight’ sounded, it wasn’t much of a plan. The three of them — Tybalt refused to include Yarrow in this — wouldn’t stand much of a chance against Danarius and his organisation, as much as Tybalt hated to admit it. He had no idea where Isabela’s experiences lay. His running with Athenril didn’t compare to anything Danrius could throw at them. The only one who had any insight in what was happening was Fenris.

“I’m going to call Aveline,” Tybalt decided.

“No!” Fenris stuck his hand out as if to stop Tybalt from reaching for his phone.

“Who’s Aveline?” Isabela asked.

“She’s my friend,” Tybalt said.

“She’s a cop,” said Fenris.

Tybalt turned to look at Fenris. What did Aveline’s job have to do with this? Why couldn’t he call her? If anything, he figured that calling cops when a group of organized, very scary, very deadly criminals were after you was a smart move.

“Danarius has his people everywhere. Including the police. His base of operations might be on the other side of the country, but I am not about to take that risk and neither should you.”

He couldn’t possibly mean…

“Aveline is my friend,” Tybalt repeated. “She would never work for someone like Danarius. Never.”

Fenris raked a hand through his hair and paced the room.

“That is not what I meant. Aveline is one person. One good person. But that does not mean all of her colleagues are,” he began to explain. “We cannot involve the police. If we do, we might just as well hand ourselves over to Danarius’s men now.”

Tybalt looked to Isabela, who shrugged.

“Don’t look at me. I’m with Fenris on this one,” she said.

Tybalt folded his left hand over his eyes while his right began to card through Yarrow’s fur. This was all very complicated. He had to admit that Fenris and Isabela had a point. It just didn’t feel right. Aveline had always had his back, no matter how much trouble he got himself into. Not calling her now, when they needed all the people they could get, felt unnatural. He rubbed his hand over his face and tried to think. Maybe there was something he could do. Maybe there was a magical solution that would let them all just walk away from this nightmare. He just couldn’t think of it.

Finally, Tybalt looked up again.

“Danarius is not going to let you go unless he’s dead.” It was a statement. A fact. With that came the dawning realisation that before all this was done, someone would end up dead. He hoped to whatever powers that might have a hand in his life that it would not be his friends or Tybalt himself. He, unsurprisingly, rather liked being alive.

Fenris nodded.

“It is either that or keep running, and I grow weary of the latter,” he admitted.

“Fantastic. We’re going to have to kill a criminal mastermind.” Tybalt sighed and contemplated if, while they were at planning to do impossible things, maybe they could go and fight a dragon too. Actually, he felt like he’d prefer to fight a dragon.

“Oh, if that’s all,” Isabela scoffed.

Tybalt stared at her.

“I was being sarcastic.” She explained.

“Yeah, I did not get that.”

Fenris coughed in a way Tybalt had come to associate with him hiding a smile. Tybalt looked at him, wondering if he was being laughed at or with, but found Fenris looking back at him with a hope and softness in his eyes that all but took Tybalt’s breath away. Fine then. They were going to do this and come out on top and once this was all done, he was going to kiss Fenris.

“Just one thing,” Isabela said. “How do we know that, once Danny boy is worm food, they won’t still come after Fenris?”

They didn’t. Not with complete certainty, but Tybalt wasn’t about to admit to that.

“Power vacuums,” he said instead. “Danarius is in charge, right? And he doesn’t sound like the kind of person who gives power away easily so if he’s out of the picture…”

“His lieutenants will most likely be too busy fighting each other to bother with me,” Fenris filled in. “Not to mention that Danarius has probably kept the news of my defection covered up as well. He would not want for his other pets to get ideas about their chances.”

“Oh well, if everyone here’s psychic, I don’t know what I’m worried about. So, what are we going to do? Because I have to say, the running idea is starting to sound very tempting.” Isabela looked between the two of them with her arms crossed.

Tybalt wished that he were psychic. He bit his bottom lip and thought about their options for a moment. This was uniquely terrifying, but as long as he kept going, as long as he didn’t pause long enough to get his thoughts stuck in a merry-go-round of terror and panic, he could keep going. Things looked bad right now, but they’d looked bad before and he’d always come out on top. This was not going to be any different. He wouldn’t allow it.

“Let’s go to my place,” he said. “We’ll have food, a place to sit and a much smaller chance of accidentally impaling ourselves on rusty spikes or contracting some kind of disease that’ll have Anders grumbling at me.”

“I don’t want to draw them-” Fenris started.

“They saw us at the end of the date, right? They’ll show up there sooner or later and I’d much rather be somewhere that I know.” And somewhere where he could take a long shower because it felt as if his skin was trying to crawl off of his body at the idea of the amount of germs and filth that must have accumulated in this place over who knew how long a time. “Please. I just… I just want to get out of here and go home. Just for a little bit.”

They looked at each other and Tybalt couldn’t help but notice that Fenris didn’t look entirely convinced. Time for the secret weapon, then.

“I haven’t had anything to eat since lunch and Yarrow’s getting hungry too.” Well, he guessed Yarrow was anyway. The big dog was just sitting next to Tybalt, tongue lolling out of his maw and tail occasionally thumping on the floor. He had his new two legged person back. All was well in Yarrow’s world.

Sometimes, Tybalt imagined that life would be so much more easier if he were a spoiled dog. Dogs didn’t have to worry about any of this stuff.

“Same here,” Isabela chipped in.

Fenris sighed and nodded.

“I suppose,” he said, “that you have a point. And -” his lips twitched into the slightest of smiles, barely visible “- that I could eat as well.”

For a moment, Tybalt felt overwhelmingly, stupidly grateful that Fenris was coming with them instead of insisting they go without him.

“Great. Awesome. Let’s get out of this death trap and go somewhere less likely to collapse on top of us,” Isabela decided. She made to move towards the door, then turned to gesture for Fenris to go first. “Just in case you get any new loner, self-sacrificial ideas.”

Fenris stopped Tybalt, just before the entrance to the room.

“Can I have that gun Athenril got me?” he asked. His voice was little more than a soft murmur.

Tybalt blinked, confused for a moment before he remembered that yes, indeed, he had a gun and Fenris was probably going to need it. He handed the bag over, privately glad to be rid of it. He had never taken to guns. They were too loud and far, far too dangerous for him.

Fenris dropped the bag and checked the gun over before nodding.

“This will do for now.”

Apparently, Tybalt thought, Fenris did take to guns.

Tybalt was two steps down the hallway when something slammed into him, throwing him up against the wall with enough force that the plaster crumbled a little further. An arm was pressed against his chest and a sharp edge against his throat. Breath that smelled like mustard wafted in his face.

Tybalt could see, from the corner of his eyes, that Yarrow crouched down and got ready to jump. Yarrow started to growl.

“Yarrow, no! Down!” Tybalt ordered the dog. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if his dog got hurt trying to defend him. Yarrow lowered, still showing teeth and growling but listening for the moment.

More footsteps. Isabela cursed, but Fenris remained awfully quiet.

“You’re very good at hiding, too bad your little boyfriend here isn’t. Not that you can blame him, he really isn’t that bright,” a woman spoke, just out of Tybalt’s line of sight.

“Hadriana,” Fenris growled. “Let them go, they have nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, I will, don’t worry your pretty little head over that. You just have to go with these nice gentlemen.”

Hadriana’s promise to them go seemed unlikely at best. Tybalt could see the face of the man holding him against the wall. They’d either kill him and Isabela or… or they had nothing to worry about because they were powerful enough to make this go away. If they had someone in the police department here…

Shit.

At least the whole being threatened with a knife thing wasn’t new. Tybalt had never expected anything good to come out of his time with Athenril’s gang but, at this moment, he was glad to have been proved wrong. He would not allow them to use him as leverage against Fenris and he was definitely not going to be killed in this rundown wreck of a building.

Most of Tybalt’s line of sight was blocked by Mustard Breath holding him and he didn’t want to look in that face. All harsh lines and angles and uncaring about the life Mustard Breath could so easily end. He couldn’t see Isabela. He could see Fenris’s shoulder, all tense and rigid. It wasn’t enough to see what they were going to do. All Tybalt could hope for was that they would follow his lead.

He closed his eyes, briefly, to gather himself and focus only on the knife against his throat and the man.

He could do this, Tybalt told himself, it wasn’t that difficult. He’d done this before and if he was quick enough and didn’t doubt himself, it would all turn out fine. He hoped.

Tybalt slammed his knee up with as much force as he could manage, going right for his opponent’s groin. It was a dirty move. He knew that. People who fought fair in these circumstances were usually the ones who ended up dead. The guy staggered, his breath escaping him in a hollow sound. While the man still wheezed, Tybalt brought his hands up and struck his attacker over the ears as hard as he could. By the sound of it, a second fight broke out on his left where Isabela was, and then on Fenris’s side as well.

Tybalt made a grab for the knife, but Mustard Breath came back, punching Tybalt in the face. He tasted blood in his mouth, thick and warm and nauseating. Tybalt dropped low, trying to avoid a knife slash. It hit his arm. The knife sliced through fabric and into flesh, leaving Tybalt with a stinging, deep cut.

Yarrow growled and dove forward at the man who had attacked his human. He grabbed the attacker by the arm that held the knife.

There was only so much a person could do against the full weight of a dog of Yarrow’s size throwing themselves onto someone, especially when Tybalt kicked, driving his feet right into Mustard Breath’s kneecaps. That took him down with a pained gasp. Tybalt scrambled back to his feet and stomped on the hand holding the knife. He heard something crack. Bones? Probably. Mustard Breath screamed.

A faint spark of satisfaction flared up through Tybalt and he grabbed for the knife.

Having a weapon in his hand felt better.

He looked around, breathing heavy. Isabela bashed a guy’s head hard enough into the floor to knock him out cold. Fenris’s hands were bloody, and his attacker dropped to the floor. Whatever his nose had looked like before Fenris got to him, Tybalt was confident not a surgeon in the world could get it back to that state.

There were more coming down the hallway. Tybalt counted three, four. The woman who, he guessed, had spoken had drawn a gun.

This was going to end badly. How many people did they have? Meanwhile, it was just Isabela, him and Fenris with one gun while both Tybalt and Isabela had a knife.

Tybalt opened his mouth to yell a warning when he heard sharp, short sounds, four in a row that seemed to immediately follow the reinforcements dropping like sacks of flour that had suddenly had a hole poked in them. Hadriana whirled around, for a moment forgetting the threat in front of her when her men dropped like that.

Tybalt felt vaguely ill.

“Ah ah,” a voice so familiar that Tybalt almost wanted to laugh sounded through the dilapidated hall. “That would be a very bad idea. Put the gun down.”

Out of the shadows stepped a man with blond hair and a smile on his face that Tybalt had seen often these last few days in the book store.

“Zevran?” he asked. “What-”

Just then, a vaguely Fenris-shaped blur burst past Tybalt and jumped at Hadriana, hitting her once over the back of the head with the back of the gun. She collapsed with Fenris standing over her, frame taut with fury and dragging in breath as if he hadn’t tasted fresh air in years.

“The only moment to trust her,” he spat the words out, “is when she’s unconscious.”

Zevran arched an eyebrow at Fenris, amused half-smile playing on his features.

“I do so enjoy showing up fashionably late. Ghileon always accuses me of giving him gray hairs. So rude.” He tssked and shook his head before nudging the fallen men with the tip of his shoes.

Tybalt stared at Zevran, eyes wide and very consciously not looking at the puddles of blood forming on the floor.

“Why- what- how- what’s going on?!” he finally yelped.

“I would like to know as well,” Fenris said. He kept himself positioned between Tybalt and Zevran, hand ready to draw his gun. Tybalt really didn’t want to have to explain to Ghileon that Fenris had killed Zevran, or the other way around.

“For the record, me too.” Isabela joined them, taking position next to Tybalt and flipping her knife casually in the air. A quick glance back informed Tybalt that her attacker was out cold as well.

“Oh yes, that is rather a long story and-”

“We’ll make time.” Fenris’s voice dipped low and harsh, a promise of violence to come if Zevran proved himself a danger to them.

Yarrow whined, pressing himself as close as possible against Tybalt’s legs. Tybalt ruffed his hand over the dog’s fur. All would be fine. Zevran was on their side. He had to be. Why would he otherwise have intervened? He’d probably saved their lives.

“So prickly,” Zevran teased. “Ah, very well. I did not get paid for secrecy, no? My boss does not like your boss-”

“Former boss,” Fenris corrected him with a cold snap.

“So I was hired to provide a… solution? That is a nice word for it, don’t you think so? But… ah… I fear we’ve made a mess. Ghileon will make me sleep on the couch for this tonight.” Zevran mournfully shook his head just as a little more of Tybalt’s logical, orderly world crumbled.

“What does Mahariel have to do with this?” Please don’t let his boss be some kind of crime lord, Tybalt prayed to whatever would listen. He would move back in with his mother if that was the case because clearly he was making terrible choices.

“We’re in the same branch of employment. Of course his was government sanctioned and he likes to claim retirement these days, but one never truly retires in our line of work.” Zevran shrugged as if to say ‘what can I do?’. “That said, there is a mess to clean up and people to question. I know of no one better than Ghileon when it comes to the latter.”

Tybalt pinched the bridge of his nose and focused on breathing for a moment. How was this his life? Just a week ago, he had been busy with being a lovestruck, mopey puppy and now his life involved murder and criminal organizations and his boss was some sort of government… what? Assassin? Spy?

He needed to sit down. That was what he needed to do.

“Hawke?” Fenris turned to look at him. A frown creased his brow. “Are you well?”

Tybalt wanted to say yes. They had enough to worry about, but everything came slamming into him and things were changing far too much. He shook his head.

“N-no. I need to go and sit or something and just…” He didn’t know what. Something. Breathing, preferably. Well, at least this hadn’t happened during the fight.

“I’ll call Ghileon, face the music so to speak. He will come get you. It will all be well,” Zevran decided. “He will question the survivors.”

At least one of them had an idea what to do. Tybalt couldn’t help but wonder how often Zevran had been in situations like this.

Fenris abandoned his position between Zevran and Tybalt, apparently deciding that Zevran was not the greatest risk at that moment, and was at Tybalt’s side in three steps. He reached to touch and, when Tybalt didn’t flinch back, wrapped his arms around Tybalt in a hug.

“Just breathe with me,” he whispered. “I am sorry for dragging you into this.”

Tybalt stuttered out a breath, then another, before he found the air in his lungs to reply.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright folks, bit of an announcement here. I'm getting the keys to my new house coming Thursday and have one month to get moved out of my old place, return the old place to its original state and get my new place ready. All this while also working four days a week. That's not going to jam well with my autism so I'm taking steps to decrease the pressure. One of these things will be that I cannot guarantee a regular update schedule during September and the week directly after. I do have chapter 21 completed and in the hands of my wonderful betas right now and chapter 22 is halfway done. Hopefully I'll have 22 completed by the end of this week so I can still get those up semi-close to regular programming. After that, I'll be taking a short break while I run around in real life like a headless chicken. If you want more details, you can go to [this post](http://graciessocksdrawer.tumblr.com/post/149700595244/news) on my tumblr.

Tybalt had never been in Mahariel’s home. He’d never even been near it. Hell, he didn’t even know where it was. Mahariel’s home was quite unlike anything he had ever expected. Tybalt wasn’t certain what he’d imagined the place would look like, but it certainly wouldn’t have come with a couch that looked like several shaggy-haired, orange muppets had given their life so that it might exist.

It was a very comfortable couch, though.

He also hadn’t imagined that he would be sitting on that couch with a mug of hot chocolate milk in his hand. Isabela had sprawled over a worn, patched recliner while Fenris was keeping guard near the window.

Yarrow, meanwhile, had dropped down in front of the couch. His paws twitched and he occasionally whined in his sleep.

It was good to see that at least one of them could relax.

They had made their best attempt at cleaning their assorted injuries up after Mahariel had dropped them off. Tybalt’s face still hurt and he was pretty sure that the cut on his arm was starting to bleed through the haphazardly wrapped bandage. Fenris’s lip had stopped bleeding, at least, and his right eye had started to swell shut. Isabela, meanwhile, at first glance looked like nothing had happened to her. A closer look revealed bruises slowly forming on the side of her face.

Well. At least they were alive and Mahariel hadn’t yelled at them. He hadn’t said anything much before he had left again, to be honest, but that was nothing new. It was kind of nice, Tybalt thought, that at least some things remained the same.

“This is weird,” Tybalt finally said in a bid to break the silence that filled the room like a thick, heavy blanket.

“Really? And here I was thinking that it was just another Monday,” Isabela told him. There was a sharp tone to her words that Tybalt hadn’t yet filed away with a meaning attached to it.

“It’s Wednesday,” he pointed out.

For some reason that was quite beyond him, that drew a deep sigh from Isabela.

“Well, it is,” Tybalt insisted. “What’s going to happen now?”

“I suppose,” Fenris said and pulled away from the window, “that we have to wait for Mahariel and probably Zevran. I would like to know who Zevran works for.”

“And I’d like to know who else is working for some secret organisation. I’m just about done with surprises for today.” Tybalt fixed Isabela with a pointed look.

Isabela blinked at him.

Tybalt stared back. Well, more like gave her shoulder a very steady look, but that counted for him.

Isabela did not appear to be even slightly impressed.

Fenris leaned back, looking between Isabela and Tybalt with something that was vaguely reminiscent of amusement.

“Well?” Tybalt asked her.

“Well what?”

Tybalt pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling that same, all too familiar headache build up that he got when Carver was being purposefully obtuse with him. At the moment, Tybalt was willing to guess that Isabela was playing at a similar game.

“What do you do for a living? If you’re some kind of spy or assassin or something I’d just like to know beforehand,” Tybalt pressed on.

Isabela laughed.

“I think your boyfriend broke a little,” she told Fenris. “At the moment, I’m a tattoo artist. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“At the moment?” Tybalt asked.

His question was met with a grin that was more teeth than humour.

“You’ll have to get more approval points before you get my tragic back story.”

Right. That had been prying then. He really needed to figure that how to shut up before he offended people. He opened his mouth to apologize, but was cut off by the sound of the saddest, oldest, most worn car. Tybalt knew exactly whose car made that noise. He had seen it often. The car could still be deemed roadworthy, but only if you squinted and tilted your head just so.

Fenris was at the window in an instant, his hand back on the gun.

Tybalt buried his face in his hands and moaned woefully.

“Is that a Beetle that looks like it’s held together by tape and chewing gum?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. That car had a particular noise, and he wasn’t even touching the sky blue paintjob.

“That… that would be a generous description.” Even Fenris sounded amazed.

“Great,” Tybalt groaned and flopped back in his seat. “Someone called Anders.”

He felt like he should put his money on Mahariel, but that would be a sucker’s bet, if he recalled Bethany’s explanation correctly.

“And Merrill and Varric,” Fenris added.

“What?!” Tybalt jolted from his lethargy and jumped from his chair. The cut on his arm violently reminded him that he was still injured. It probably started to bleed again, just for the fun of it. He rushed to the window to look outside and yeah, there was not just Anders’s beat up old car but also Anders, Merrill and Varric walking up to the front door. Mahariel must have told them.

At least they hadn’t told-

The sound of motorcycle jolted Tybalt.

“Oh crap,” he said, heaving a deep, defeated sigh.

“What?” Fenris asked, grabbing Tybalt’s lower left arm.

Tybalt didn’t look up and he didn’t pull away. His eyes kept focus on the motorcycle pulling up behind Anders’s car.

“They called Aveline as well,” he grumbled.

Now he could only hope that they hadn’t called his younger siblings or, even worse, his mother. He loved his family, but they all had their own lives. He didn’t want Bethany to miss classes or exams or Carver to get in trouble with his training because he wanted to help his big brother. As for his mother… Tybalt had hurt her enough with his time spent in Athenril’s gang. He didn’t want her to have to worry about this.

He still clung to the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, there was some kind of magical fix for this that would solve this whole mess so it wouldn’t loom over their head for the rest of their lives.

“Who’re they?” Isabela asked. She didn’t even bother getting up from her chair.

“My friends,” Tybalt answered, unable to completely eradicate the mournful tone from his voice. Didn’t Mahariel realize that by getting them involved he was also putting them in danger? Then again, he probably knew that very well. Hopefully, there was a reason for Tybalt’s friends showing up or he was going to be very cross with his boss; he might even have some stern words.

He watched Merrill take out the keys -- wait did she have the keys to Mahariel’s place? How? Why?

Merrill had more key-chains than actual keys. They were all very bright and colourful, some plastic, some cloth and all very, very Merrill. Seeing them was almost a comfort to Tybalt, telling him that no matter how much things changed, some would always remain the same.

Unless Merrill turned out to have a secret profession as well. In that case all bets were off and Tybalt was going to find a nice, uninhabited little island somewhere and live there with Yarrow and grow all the herbs and plants his heart desired.

“My life,” Tybalt said to no one in particular, “has become so very strange.”

He pulled away from the window and Fenris’s touch. His arm felt just a little bare without Fenris’s hand. He passed Yarrow, still asleep, on his way to the hall. Fenris footsteps were close behind him and he heard the shift of fabric against fabric when Isabela turned and sat up a little straighter.

The door opened just as Tybalt set foot into the hall. Merrill and Anders poured in, almost stumbled over each other while Aveline followed with the same kind of exasperated expression on her face as when Tybalt had overspent at the plant nursery and couldn’t take everything back home in the bus.

Mahariel probably hadn’t told them about the exact kind of mess Tybalt had managed to get himself involved in this time. They wouldn’t look anywhere near as carefree as they did at that moment, or at least until they saw Tybalt’s face. Merrill froze with a high-pitched eep before clasping her hands over her mouth. Aveline’s eyes narrowed, her mouth set to a thin, strict line and her shoulders squared. She looked ready to go back outside and start arresting people. Anders stood still for a very short moment before he surged forward.

Tybalt startled back at Anders’s sudden movement, but not fast enough to escape his friend’s probing fingers.

“Ow!” Tybalt yelped when Anders poked at his jaw.

“What happened?” Aveline demanded, woefully unsympathetic to Tybalt’s plight.

“I got- ow! There was- ouch! Anders stop touching me!” Tybalt batted at Anders’s hands. He was not in the mood to be poked and prodded, no matter how good Anders’s intentions were.

“You’re hurt,” Anders said, as if that was somehow one of the greater injustices in the world.

“Yeah, well, so are Fenris and Isabela,” Tybalt argued back.

“That doesn’t make it better!” Anders exclaimed, utterly horrified.

Aveline looked between Tybalt and Fenris. Tybalt couldn’t help but feel as if maybe she was starting to reconsider the going back outside part. Not the arresting people. In fact, Tybalt was pretty sure that she was thinking about starting her arresting spree with someone inside. He very casually tried to step in between Fenris and Aveline.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said.

“No, it is not,” Fenris added. “It is, in fact, worse.”

“That’s not helping,” Tybalt hissed over his shoulder at Fenris.

“But probably more accurate,” said Aveline.

Whilst ducking out of Anders’s reach, Tybalt managed to herd everyone back into Mahariel’s living room. Isabela arched an eyebrow at the new arrivals.

“This is starting to look like a party,” she commented. That earned her a glare from Aveline and a confused look from Merrill.

“I… uhm… I suppose we should tell you what’s going on, huh?” Tybalt asked. He twisted his hands together, looking from one friend to the next, and felt a sense of dread settling in the pit of his stomach. He had never wanted to put them at risk but they would never forgive him if he kept them out of the loop.

“You think?” Aveline asked.

“Well, yes I-” Oh. Right. Rhetorical questions. He had never managed to get the hang of those. Tybalt looked to Fenris in search of permission to share his story. Fenris nodded.

Well then. No backing out now.

“Someone’s after Fenris and I’m going to help him.” Tybalt took on deep, steadying breath. “Aveline, please don’t start shouting, but that person is Danarius.”

He heard Aveline suck in breath through her teeth. Her shoulders went rigid and her hands turned to white-knuckled fists. Next to her, Merrill gasped.

“Can we maybe do this after I’ve had a look at everyone?” Anders asked, clearly unimpressed by Tybalt’s revelation. His eyes were, instead, fixed on the admittedly shoddy bandaging on Tybalt’s arm. Tybalt looked at his arm. Oh, look at that. Was that blood? Yes, that was most definitely blood soaking through the cloth.

Wasn’t that just lovely?

“You should have gone to the hospital with that,” Anders pressed on. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because we like to keep living,” Fenris replied.

“But… but a hospital keeps you living,” Merrill piped up, drawing a sigh from Aveline.

“Not in this case,” Aveline said. “He’ll have people watching hospitals in the vicinity.”

To be honest, Tybalt hadn’t even thought of that. He just hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital. The smells there were off, too many people, too much noise and a lot of chaos. After the day he’d had, that was the last thing he needed. Maybe not the last thing. The last thing he needed was Danarius catching up to him and-

Tybalt took a deep breath and forced his brain to stop.

“Fenris saw one of Danarius’s men in front of my building after our date,” Tybalt plunged back into explaining what was going on. “I think they’ve been watching me. We were ambushed today after Isabela and I found Fenris and the woman with them said something about my not being that good at hiding.”

Tybalt looked at Fenris, an ache blooming up in his chest. It was his fault they’d found Fenris. If he hadn’t gone out to look for him, Hadriana and the others wouldn’t have been able to follow him.

“They would have found me anyway. Hadriana is relentless in whatever task Danarius sets her,” said Fenris and stepped close enough to brush his hand against Tybalt’s. “At least now I was not forced to face them on my own.”

Tybalt looked up at those words. It felt as if his heart stuttered for a moment when he caught Fenris’s gaze. The idea of Fenris having to fight those people without having anyone to back him up… no, he didn’t want to think on that any further.

“Sorry, but I don’t understand. Why is Danarius after you?” Merrill asked. Her slim hands were folded in her lip while her big eyes flew from Fenris to Tybalt and back again.

For a moment, Tybalt and Fenris exchanged a look before Fenris turned back to the small group in the living room.

“I started working for one of Danarius’s men when I was still a young teenager. It was easy money and I did not believe I would get very far by staying in school. At least that way I could help my mother. I did not realize just how deeply I was drawn into it until it was all but too late. By that time, I had become one of Danarius’s hounds, if you will, and I realized that my mother and sister were at risk. I stole money from Danarius to help them get away and start a new life,” he said with the flat tone of voice of someone who was telling a story that he cared little for. He almost sounded as if it hadn’t happened to him.

In a way, Fenris’s tone reminded Tybalt of him telling his mother about a panic attack or dissociation episode. It was easier to talk about if he could pretend it hadn’t happened to him.

Varric let out a low whistle.

“Well,” he said. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit,” Tybalt echoed.

“Right, I think we can all agree that this is a right mess, but will all the injured people now hold still so that an actually qualified doctor can have a look at them and make sure no one drops dead?” Anders asked, though to Tybalt it felt kind of like there was a very huffy order hidden somewhere in the words. “Since apparently an actual hospital is out of the question.”

Anders sounded personally offended by that, though Tybalt couldn’t quite work out why. It wasn’t like they’d said the hospital itself was bad, had they?

‘Oh! I’ll go get Ghileon’s first aid kit.” Merrill jumped to her feet and scrambled out of the room, leaving Tybalt to stand and look at the spot she had just occupied. How did she even know where Mahariel kept his first aid kit? And he still hadn’t figured how she’d got the keys to Mahariel’s home.

There was probably some kind of perfectly logical explanation for this that did not involve Merrill the Government Spy or Merrill the Scary Assassin. He hoped.

Anders ushered Tybalt into a chair and began to unwrap the bandages while muttering under his breath about how certain people needed to have a refresher first aid course.

“Is it bad?” Fenris asked as he took position right behind Tybalt’s left shoulder.

Anders looked up, a faintly annoyed expression on his face.

“No, I tend to qualify my friends getting injured as just perfectly fine, something that should happen more often,” he snapped.

Tybalt decided to just go ahead and assume that Anders was being sarcastic and probably more than a little upset with recent developments in Tybalt’s life. Tybalt hissed as Anders peeled the last layer of bandages away.

“A knife, right? Well, this is going to need stitches,” Anders said. “And a much more thorough cleaning. Who knows what was on that blade. At least your shots are up to date.”

Isabela got up from her seat while Anders fussed over Tybalt’s arm and she ambled over to the cabinets, where she began to poke through them.

“What are you doing?” Aveline asked. Faintly confused disapproval dripped from her voice.

“Well, I don’t know about you lot, but after all this I really need a drink and- ah. There it is.” Isabela turned around brandishing a square bottle that held a rich, amber coloured liquid. “Your boss has great taste, Tibbles.”

Tybalt blinked at her, trying to come up with something to say.

“My name,” he finally said, “is not Tibbles.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still in the process of moving. I have one more chapter prepared and then I’ll be taking a quick break to focus on the move, cleaning my old place and taking a short breather. If you want more details, you can go to [this post](http://graciessocksdrawer.tumblr.com/post/149700595244/news%22) on my tumblr.

It turned out that Mahariel had a frighteningly complete first aid kit. It was worrying enough that Merrill had to use both hands to carry it. When someone who carried buckets with flowers and watering cans for her job thought that something was heavy, it really was. Who on earth needed such a complete kit? As far as Tybalt was concerned, this went far beyond the scope of first aid and entered ‘you should really start thinking about going to a hospital’ territory.

Although he supposed that he should be thankful, since it did keep him out of the hospital, much to Anders’s dislike.

Regardless, if he never had to be stitched up in his boss’s living room again it would still be far too soon.

He supposed that he should just count himself lucky that Mahariel kept a supply of really, really nice, happy local anesthetics in the case as well. He didn’t think he would have managed to keep from keeling over while Anders patched him up otherwise.

Tybalt had stopped bleeding and was properly bandaged up, and both Fenris and Isabela had been looked over and declared in good, if bruised and slightly battered, shape.

Looking at his friends, Tybalt found himself uncertain what to do next.

“Did… uh… did Mahariel say anything when he called you?” he asked Merrill.

“Oh! Oh yes. Oh, I can’t believe I almost forgot. So sorry. Yes, yes, he said that we should wait here, not to open the door for anyone and for him to come back.” She paused for a second with a frown and scrunched her nose as if she were trying to to remember something more. “And he keeps extra guns behind the… uhm… I’m sorry it all happened really fast. Behind the bookcase?”

Honestly, at the that point Tybalt resolved to just not be surprised anymore. Clearly, his life had descended into some sort of twilight zone and it would just be better for his sanity if he stopped questioning.

He pushed himself up from his chair and stumbled but caught himself before anyone needed to come to his aid.

“Where are you going?” Aveline asked. Her brows furrowed into a deep frown.

“I need something to eat,” Tybalt answered with his eyes on the floor. “And if Mahariel keeps his kitchen half as stocked as his medical supplies and weapons, there should be a feast fit for a king in there.”

It took him opening three doors — the first was to hallway, and the second in that hallway turned out to be to a pantry — before he actually found the kitchen. He wasn’t certain what he’d expected. Oh, certainly, it never could have been as bad as Anders’s kitchen, but beyond that he hadn’t anticipated much of anything, be it for good or ill.

But there were fruits and vegetables, and once he looked in the fridge he even found fish so fresh he could swear it still smelled of the sea. It was good to know that he could count Mahariel as one of his acquaintances who could cook.

Now what could he-

“Hawke?”

Tybalt yelped, jerked back from the fridge and whirled around. His hands came up as fists before he realized that Fenris had followed him into the kitchen.

“I am getting you bells. You and Zevran. You two are so quiet it’s going to get you hurt one of these days,” he sputtered. His heart pounded in his chest as if it were trying to break through his ribcage. “Why would you sneak up on me after a day like today?”

He wasn’t entirely certain, but Tybalt was still willing to put money on a bet that the little twitch to Fenris’s lips had been a smile.

“I apologize,” said Fenris, circling around the kitchen island to Tybalt’s side. “And I owe you another apology as well.”

“Another?” Tybalt blinked. “I’m pretty sure you don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Unless it was about that whole dragging him into a fight bit, but he thought that they had settled that one already.

Fenris shook his head.

“I do. I…” He hesitated for a moment. His fingers rubbed across the edge of the counter top. “I thought I had to protect you. I thought you would be at a loss in the world I called my home for so long.”

Oh. That.

“That’s what most people think.” Tybalt shrugged. “Being the way I am… It doesn’t mean I’m incapable of getting involved in that sort of thing. You don’t have to apologize for not realizing it.”

“I do.” Fenris took a step closer so they were almost touching now, and Tybalt couldn’t even dream of wanting to step away. He could all but feel Fenris’s warmth radiating out towards him. “You fought well today. I had not expected that.”

With Fenris this close to him, Tybalt could see the way the bruised skin on Fenris’s face coloured, pooling darker spots and splotches of fading, insulted red.

“Fighting isn’t that hard,” Tybalt blurted out. “It’s not social stuff… well, it is in a way. But you know who’s with you and against you. It’s about noticing stuff and I can’t stop noticing and-” And he really should stop talking before he somehow convinced Fenris that he was some kind of violent thrill seeker or something even worse.

“I should not have underestimated you.” Fenris’s voice went lower, more quiet as he rose up on his toes. His hands found each other behind Tybalt’s neck and he tugged Tybalt down.

Tybalt stooped. His hands came to rest on the counter top on either side of Fenris. He scarcely dared to breathe as an irrational worry that perhaps this wasn’t real settled in his mind. Perhaps he’d been hit over the head in the fight and this was some kind of weird dream. Did people dream when they were unconscious? He found himself hoping that it was and it wasn’t a dream. If it was nothing more than a dream, it was a nice one and hopefully one where they wouldn’t be barged in on. Then again, if it was a dream then it also wouldn’t be real and oh, by everything that was dear to him, he wanted nothing more than for this to be true.

The ache went all the way down to the palms of his hands, making his fingers curl into the stone surface.

Fenris kissed him then, almost hesitant, and pulling away after not even a second.

Oh no, that wouldn’t do at all.

Tybalt closed the small space between them again. His right hand came up to cradle the back of Fenris’s head. Kissing Fenris was met with a hunger of wanting to belong and it was so very easy for Tybalt to lose himself to that, to just feel every way Fenris pressed against him, the touch of lips, fingers clutching at his shirt and pulling the fabric taut. Fenris’s warmth radiated like a fire born to cleanse and restart. Tybalt wound his fingers in Fenris’s white hair.

He wished that he could bribe reality and let this moment last a little longer.

Finally, Fenris pulled back but only the barest minimum, just enough to breathe. To talk.

“I have wanted to do that for so long now,” he whispered.

Tybalt laughed. He didn’t know why. It just bubbled up and spilled over like something long overdue. He tried to kiss Fenris again, but broke away when he couldn’t keep his laughter in and settled for leaning his forehead against Fenris’s, his hand still tangled in Fenris’s hair.

“I’m so glad that you’re back,” he finally said. “Please don’t leave again?”

“I will not.” Fenris’s voice broke for a fraction of a second on the last word. “Not if I have a say in it.”

Tybalt hoped, with all his heart, that Fenris would have a say in it.

Fenris remained in the kitchen while Tybalt rummaged around in an attempt to figure out what he could make for dinner with the supplies he’d found. Something quick and easy, as he didn’t know where everything was, but hearty enough to fill a lot of bellies. In the end, he set Fenris to peeling potatoes while he mixed herbs with butter for the chicken he’d found.

He hoped that Mahariel had been meaning to eat it that night. Otherwise Tybalt would just get him another one later. When they weren’t trying to figure out how to survive the next few days.

Chicken, potatoes, salad, and if the apples cooperated, homemade applesauce. It was almost enough to bring him back to the birthday meals his mother would make for him without fail every single year. It almost made Tybalt laugh.

Tybalt casually palmed a few slices of tomato to nibble on in a bid to appease the ravening beast his stomach was gradually turning into. He started to pick through the cabinet in search for something a little more substantial to ward off the hangry feelings that were sure to follow soon. He was pretty sure that Isabela was going to try and call him ‘Tibbles’ at least a few more times, and the last thing he needed to do was to blow up at her about it.

That would probably, given all he had seen of her up to then, only make her more determined to turn that damnable nickname into a thing.

Varric would probably think that Tibbles was hilarious.

Just as Tybalt fished out a package of chocolate chip cookies — today called for chocolate, massive amount of chocolate — when he saw from the corner of his eyes that Fenris froze for a second, and very briefly one thought flashed through Tybalt’s mind: not again. He wanted to have dinner, not another fight against whatever had found them.

Merrill came ambling through the kitchen door.

“Mahariel’s back and he’s brought Zevran and- Oooh are we having chicken tonight?” she asked, eyeing the chicken.

“If I get around to actually putting it in the oven,” Tybalt replied with a huff before he sunk his teeth into the cookie.

“Oh of course. I don’t think raw chicken would go over very well.” She then turned to Fenris, smiling gleefully. “Did he tell you to peel them clockwise too?”

Fenris nodded, a grave expression on his face.

“He does that to everyone who helps,” she confided in him.

“I’m still in the room,” Tybalt complained. “I can hear you.”

“Except Anders,” Merrill blithely went on. “He never gets to help.”

“No one with functioning taste-buds wants Anders to help. Banning him from the kitchen is the best way to prevent food poisoning.” He had saved them all from a terrible fate.

Fenris looked over Merrill’s shoulder and gave Tybalt a smile that did things to his stomach and his knees and at the same time sent his mind back to the kiss they had shared not too long ago. Was it hot in the kitchen or was that just him?

Yeah, probably just him.

“So Mahariel’s here?” Tybalt asked. His voice came out a little too loud and a little too squeaky, though he would deny the latter until his dying breath.

“Oh!” Merrill turned around and blinked as if she were trying to recall why she had originally come into the kitchen. “Oh yes. Yes he is. And he brought food for Yarrow. Zevran said that he’d suggested pizza, but Mahariel guessed you’d already taken over the kitchen by now.”

Was he really becoming that predictable? On second though, Tybalt realized that yes, he most definitely was. At least someone here was predictable and not throwing him curveballs left, right, front and center, even if that person was Tybalt himself. Small victories and all that.

“Did he have news?” Fenris asked.

“Who? Mahariel? I suppose so. He didn’t say anything, but he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have anything to share, right?” Merrill looked between Fenris and Tybalt.

“No idea.” Tybalt shrugged. A little bit of resentment festered inside at having been lied to for years. He tried to tell himself that it probably hadn’t been Mahariel’s choice either, and it wasn’t like they were close friends like Tybalt and Aveline, Anders, Merrill, or Varric. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed by it all. “Just let me put the chicken in the oven and then I’ll come out.”

“Right.” Merrill paused for a moment. She wrung her hands together and looked at Tybalt before she turned. Her shoulders slumped just a fraction. That probably meant something.

Fenris spoke up once Merrill closed the door behind her.

“You’re angry,” he said.

“No I’m not.” Tybalt knew it was a lie the second he uttered the denial. “Fine, maybe I am. Can you blame me?”

He looked to Fenris, expecting platitudes or explanation as to why his anger was unjustified. Instead, he got a slight shrug and a nod.

“I am sorry, truly,” Fenris said.

Tybalt blinked.

“Why are you sorry?”

“If it had not been for me, your life would still be the same.”

“I…” Tybalt hesitated. “Well, yeah, but I really like having you in my life and it’s not as if we’ve been dating for years and you’re just now going ‘oh hey, by the way, I owe this creepy murderous crime lord a lot of money’. See, then I’d be angry with you. I think.”

“You think?” Fenris arched an eyebrow and put the knife he’d been using for his potato peeling duties down.

“Yeah. I mean. It’s not like I have the entire context of that situation because it didn’t happen, so I can only really guess about how I’d feel.”

A very soft, warm chuckle lifted through the air and Fenris looked at Tybalt with a soft fondness in his gaze that made Tybalt choke up. He didn’t think that anyone had ever looked at him like that. Tybalt stepped forward. He forgot all about the butter on his fingers and bent down to steal a quick, soft peck, little more than a brush of lips.

“For the record,” he murmured still against the corner of Fenris’s mouth, “I will always care about you, whatever might come our way.”

Once he had the chicken all buttered and in the oven, Tybalt found himself a little calmer, a little less betrayed, and a little more ready to face whatever Mahariel had to say.

Back in the living room, Tybalt found Mahariel in the seat Isabela had previously occupied, his leg propped up on the table and his cane leaning against the chair. Zevran had taken possession of the armrest, leaning against Mahariel with a comfortable sort of familiarity that made Tybalt glance at Fenris. Aveline stood leaning against the wall, arms crossed and a frown on her face that Tybalt had never seen before. Varric’s hair looked as if his hair tie had lost the battle to constrain it. Merrill had found a spot on the couch next to Varric while Isabela had dragged a chair from the dining room and sat backwards on it, her arms crossed over the backrest and her chin on her arms.

There were thin lines of dark red embedded under Mahariel’s fingernails and he hadn’t worn that shirt at the broken down house. Tybalt wasn’t certain whether he wanted to know the reasons behind that.

Yarrow, meanwhile, was busily emptying a bowl of kibble.

“Everyone is here,” Mahariel stated. “Shall I begin?”

“Please,” Aveline gritted out with barely contained violence. If she clenched her jaw any harder, Tybalt anticipated a call to her dentist would be in order.

“Yeah, please, nightmares are so much better when I know just how screwed we are,” Varric added. He smiled when he said that, with a chuckle following his words, but it felt shallow at best.

Mahariel looked around the room one last time before nodding.

“Very well. Zevran is on a job. I have retired to this city-”

“Mi amor, we both know you are as retired as I am,” said Zevran and lightly elbowed Mahariel.

“Keeping an eye on a local gang is retirement.” Mahariel shifted to give Zevran a look that was answered with a smile and a squeeze to Mahariel’s shoulder. “Regardless, Zevran’s job has crossed with my retirement and your lives.”

“I was… shall we say contracted to ensure that Danarius will stop being a problem for many people?”

“You were hired to kill him,” Fenris flatly corrected him.

“Ah, the way you say it sounds so harsh, but yes, sometimes certain… tasks need to be taken care of and then people like I step up. If the price is right, of course. Now, I must sadly confess that I was the person who left you that note that pointed you to Ghileon’s shop. I had meant to approach you there, but, well, you got along so well with Hawke…” Zevran trailed off with a little shrug.

Fenris’s shoulders stiffened and Tybalt looked between the two in confusion.

“What do you mean?” Tybalt finally asked.

“He left me a message that hinted that my sister had been seen near your bookshop,” Fenris answered instead of Zevran.

“Oh.” Tybalt’s heart sank a little. “So you didn’t…”

Fenris turned to look for a moment. At first his face was blank until realization began to set in.

“No,” he said, as firm as he could. “No, I did not come to find my sister, not after my first visit. If you had not been there, I would never have returned other than possibly to return the umbrella. You… you were interesting and kind and I wanted to know more of you. The more I learned, the more I wanted.”

Tybalt heard Merrill sigh and saw Varric hastily scribbling something on a notepad. If this conversation ended up in one of Varric’s future books, Tybalt would personally concoct a tea that would give Varric a case of explosive diarrhea, even if it was the last thing he did.

“See?” Zevran cut in. “I did well, did I not?”

Fenris sent him a chilling glare but did not attempt to refute.

“And the reason you recommended that restaurant?” Tybalt asked.

Zevran shrugged.

“I know the owner, they let me hide in the kitchen to keep an eye on things.”

Tybalt very quietly, very quickly, sent up a prayer to whatever power would help him to grant him the strength to not throttle his boss’s boyfriend.

“With that settled-” Mahariel’s tone implied that anyone who thought that it wasn’t settled had better not argue with him “-I would like to share the information gleaned from the survivors.”

He gave Zevran a sharp look, probably disapproving of wholesale murder. All he got in return was a bright, beaming grin from Zevran.

“So far Danarius has kept news of your defection limited to a select group since it would make him seem weak. He doesn’t appear to have shared the specifics with even that group. That was the good news.” Mahariel’s fingers flexed briefly on the armrest. “As for the bad news… the group sent to find you has split in two. The first one was told by Athenril to follow Tybalt. The second one is closing in on your mother and sister, Fenris.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still in the process of moving. I’ll be taking a brief hiatus for about three weeks, if all goes well, in order to focus on moving into my new place and settling in. If you want more details, you can go to [this post](http://graciessocksdrawer.tumblr.com/post/149700595244/news) on my tumblr.

Everything was very quiet for a moment that seemed to stretch on to just shy of forever. All Tybalt heard was the sound of Yarrow munching down on his kibble. The poor dog had never been fed this late and no silly human drama was going to distract him from the task of filling his hungry belly.

And then, very quietly, one word broke the silence.

“What.”

Fenris had barely even moved his lips. His hands had turned to fists and his shoulders were tense enough that they trembled.

Tybalt lifted his hand to touch Fenris’s shoulder but froze, uncertain of whether he should. He never liked being touched when he was upset and Fenris looked upset. When in doubt, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. He had learned that lesson a long time ago.

Fenris took a step closer to Mahariel, his eyes alight with fear and fury all at once. Zevran shifted almost imperceptibly in response, but Mahariel reached and rested a hand on Zevran’s arm.

“What. Did you. Say.”

Mahariel inclined his head ever so slightly.

“Danarius’s people are, according to Hadriana, closing in on your family,” he explained.

“Where are they? My mother? My sister? Did she say?” Fenris asked. A tremor crept into his voice.

“We don’t know.”

For a moment, Fenris bowed his head and took a deep, steadying breath.

“Let me speak with her,” he said.

This time, Tybalt did reach out to touch Fenris’s arm. He looked so alone that Tybalt couldn’t bear it. He had to do something or at least try. Fenris didn’t pull away. If anything, he leaned into the touch. Just a little bit, but Tybalt could tell.

“No,” Mahariel answered.

“That was not a question, I-”

“No. We need her for further interrogation.” Mahariel’s tone rang with a finality to it.

“I didn’t hear anything about this woman being turned in to the police,” Aveline said. She gave Mahariel a narrow-eyed glare which he met with an even look.

“That’s because she won’t be taken to the police. There’s a leak within the station that is currently under investigation according to my contacts. As long as we don’t know who it is, I’m not sending someone who could be our only source of reliable information there.”

Fenris snorted, a sound that was made up of pure spite.

“Hadriana has never been nor will she ever be reliable,” he said. “To put faith in anything she says is to declare yourself a fool. Let me speak with her. I have ways of making her speak the truth.”

“So do I,” Mahariel answered. Tybalt didn’t miss the brief squeeze Zevran gave Mahariel’s shoulder. “Fenris, trust me when I say I have someone who I trust completely looking into where your family is so we can beat Danarius there.”

“Someone you trust and it’s not me? I’m hurt. Wounded. To the quick.” Zevran faked a sniff. “Who did you send? Nightingale?”

“Who else?” Mahariel answered.

“Who is Nightingale?” asked Fenris.

“A dear friend,” Zevran answered. “And very good at what she does.”

Varric scraped his throat.

“Well shit, Waffles, and here I was thinking you’d be the safest of all my friends,” he said with a grin on his face that made Tybalt think Varric was somehow pleased with this development. Tybalt had no idea how he could be, but if Tybalt could trust past experiences Varric’s mind was a strange, wondrous place full of the most unusual twists and turns. He supposed that sort of thing came with being a writer and putting the poor characters through all that heartache and terror. He would probably use this whole mess as the plot for another novel. Oh yes, Tybalt was on to him.

Varric reached for his phone.

“Who are you planning to call?” Mahariel asked. He straightened up in the chair and grasped his cane, as if he were prepared to try and take the phone from Varric.

Varric chuckled.

“Calm down, I’m just going to call someone who can help us find Fenris’s family.”

“Who?” Mahariel asked. A frown appeared on his face.

“We all have our secrets.”

“No. No one has secrets,” Tybalt objected. “There will be no more secrets. Secrets are hereby banned. If I never hear another secret in my life, I will be a very happy man.”

Merrill giggled.

“Everyone’s got secrets,” she said.

“Do you have secrets?”

Merrill gave Tybalt the most innocent, butter wouldn’t melt on her tongue look she had ever managed. He could all but feel his teeth starting to rot away at the sheer sweetness on her face.

“That,” she said primly, “would be telling.”

Tybalt heaved a deep, defeated sigh as Merrill’s declaration was met with laughter from the majority of the room. Even Aveline quirked a slight smile, and Tybalt swore he saw Fenris’s lips twitch. Only Mahariel, in fact, seemed to keep a blank face.

“Right. If it’s going to keep Hawke from bursting a blood vessel. Someone who’s been an information source for a few books. After the time she questioned me and stabbed me in the book.” Varric smirked at Mahariel, waiting for him to say that Varric couldn’t make the call.

Instead, Mahariel slumped back in his seat and sighed.

“If we are to find Fenris’s family before Danarius’s people do, we’ll need all the help we can get. If Fenris agrees and your friend can keep it unofficial.” Mahariel turned to look at Fenris.

For a moment, Fenris stood quiet, looking at the group as if he was trying to figure out what was going on.

“What would you want in return?” Fenris asked Varric.

“What?” Varric blinked. “Nothing. Look, kid, I don’t really know you, but Hawke likes you a hell of a lot and the puppy eyes you keep giving him make me think you like him just as much so if helping you out keeps Waffles happy, I’m in.”

“Me too,” Merrill chirped.

“You can count me in as well,” Aveline added.

Anders sighed and looked around.

“Well, sounds like you’re going to need someone to put you lot back together again,” he said. “What the hell. I’m in.”

Isabela pumped her fist in the air.

“Go team!”

“Sarcasm?” Tybalt asked Fenris. It had sounded like something that qualified for sarcasm, but he didn’t think he could be certain of that with Isabela.

“A little.”

Ah. Great. Gradations of sarcasm because the basic concept wasn’t complicated enough. He would still take that over the secrets.

“Well, if everyone’s sorted that out, I’m just going to make that phone call now.” Varric dialed before anyone else could tell him to stop and wandered off. “Heeeey, Seeker, I have something for you to seek.”

Tybalt tangled his fingers with Fenris’s and offered him a tentative smile.

“You’re not on your own in this anymore. You’ve got a very small, very weird little army to back you up now,” he said and it felt like a promise, one that he would never break no matter what happened.

“Oh this is very touching, don’t you think so, mi amor?” Zevran drawled.

Tybalt had given up on trying to decipher whether Zevran was being sarcastic a long time ago. It only gave him a headache and not even Varric had been able to come up with a definitive conclusion.

“Very,” Mahariel answered. “For now, we have to wait. We can’t make a move until we know where your mother and sister are, Fenris. We stay in touch, and if anything odd happens, we inform each other as soon as possible.”

“And I shall stay at Hawke’s place,” Fenris decided.

“Yes and- wait. What?” Since when had they decided that? Not that Tybalt minded, but still.

“Unless you mind, of course,” Fenris corrected himself.

“Why are you staying with me? I’m not against it it’s just… why?”

Fenris ducked his gaze. He shifted his feet a little closer together, then looked up at Tybalt’s shoulder again. Fenris was almost as bad, Tybalt realized, at making eye contact as he was.

“Because I would not be able to bear it if they came for you to get to me. If they do come, I want to be there.”

Ah, so that would probably be a no on Fenris wanting to stay over for more carnal, less clothed activities, which Tybalt was most certainly not thinking of. No, not him. Absolutely not. And maybe if he repeated it often enough, he would actually start to believe himself.

“Hey, but you live with me, what if they come to my place?” Isabela complained.

“Then you will have a chance to show them your worst,” Fenris told her.

Isabela smiled wide, showing a lot of teeth.

“Aw, Fenris, you know how to make a girl happy,” she said.

* * *

Fenris, it turned out, had been very serious about his intention to stay with Tybalt in case Danarius’s men decided to make an appearance. Tybalt was uncertain whether he should be offended or not. He had managed to defend himself just fine during the fight. He had Yarrow. Anders lived right across the hall. He didn’t need someone to stand guard over him on top of all that.

On the other hand, he would much rather have Fenris nearby than pulling another disappearance act for Tybalt’s protection.

At least this worked the other way around as well. If people came for Fenris, Tybalt would be right there to help him.

They said goodbye to Anders in the hall before shuffling into Tybalt’s apartment. Poor Yarrow, tired as he was, ambled straight for his pillow and dropped onto it with an audible thud. That left them standing and staring at each other.

“I’ll take the couch-”

“-Do you want tea?”

They spoke over each other. Tybalt paused.

Well, this was spectacularly awkward, and Tybalt knew awkward. Awkward, for him, was a state of life. If there was a doctorate in the study of awkward, he would have it. He would have been a published- aaaand that metaphor was getting away from him. He reeled himself back in.

“I… uh… I’m going to make some tea and you can, well, make yourself at home, I guess?”

He hadn’t lived with anyone since he’d moved out on his own. While this wasn’t exactly living together — he reminded himself that Fenris would only be staying temporarily — it still left Tybalt feeling just a little tense, as if a little whisper told him that he couldn’t act like he normally would.

It was ridiculous. Tybalt knew that. Fenris knew about his plants. Fenris knew about _him_. There was no reason to hide or pretend that he was in any way different than he was, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling. Not entirely, at least. He remembered people he had dated in the past trying to be helpful and making suggestions about how maybe he could get rid of at least a few plants or put some decorative pillows on his couch.

Fenris hadn’t done that yet, but Tybalt couldn’t quite shake the memory of past experiences no matter how much he wanted to. This was one of those things, he suspected, where knowing wasn’t enough. He had to experience it.

It would be fine, he told himself as he walked to the kitchen. Besides, how long would this arrangement last? A day or two? Three? No more than a week, right? He didn’t think that they could afford more time than that if they were to get a step ahead of Danarius and his people.

Tybalt filled the electric kettle and switched it on. He stepped back, crossed his arms and frowned at the kettle as if he could will it to start boiling the water faster.

No such luck.

The water hadn’t even come to a simmer by the time that Fenris joined him in the kitchen. Tybalt knew that Fenris was there, could see him from the corner of his eye, but yet Fenris didn’t say anything. Tybalt waited, holding his tongue for as many seconds as he could bear it. They could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

“Should there be?” Fenris replied.

“That’s not an answer. You’ve just been standing there all quiet-like, as if you’re taking sneak-lessons from Zevran or something.”

The water in the kettle slowly began to boil.

“I am… thinking.”

Tybalt wondered if something good would come from that.

“About what?” he asked, doing his best to keep his voice even and neutral. Like he wasn’t thinking about the hundreds of things flying through his head. What if Fenris decided to leave and he had to do this on his own anyway? What if he wasn’t happy with the amount of people now involved in this whole mess?

“My… You have collected an interesting group of friends,” Fenris said.

There was a shift in his tone and Tybalt couldn’t help but notice how Fenris’s words sped up as if he was trying to wash away what he had wanted to say. Tybalt couldn’t think of a way to bring that up and resolved to let Fenris have that.

“Does ‘interesting’ actually mean that or are you going for the ‘find shelter and wait until the storm passes’ kind of meaning?” Not that Tybalt could blame Fenris if that was the case. He sometimes felt like that as well. Usually whenever Merrill and Anders started talking about that online game they played and where they were in opposing factions. That hardly ever ended well.

Fenris snorted.

“The first, though I would not blame your friends if they felt the second way about me. I have complicated their lives a great deal.” He frowned. “I had not expected their support.”

“They’re good people,” Tybalt said. “A little odd, perhaps, but good. They care.”

“Hmm.” Fenris nodded. “Are you alright?”

Tybalt blinked. Was he alright? Where had that come from?

“Me? What about you? Your family-”

“You got hurt,” Fenris cut him off. “You got hurt because of me. I need to… I need to know that you are alright despite that.”

“Oh.” Tybalt hesitated. That made sense, in a way. “I’m fine. A little sore in places. It’s been a while since I’ve last been in a fight.” And, to be fair, he hadn’t expected to have need for that particular skill set ever again after leaving Athenril’s gang. He wasn’t at his peak, but he still figured that he had done pretty well.

“No, that is not what I meant,” Fenris said. “You seem… distracted? If you do not want me here, I can leave. The hallway outside does not look that uncomfortable.”

“I don’t- what- Fenris! You can’t sleep in the hallway just because I’m being, well, me.”

“I would not sleep.”

Tybalt blinked for a moment before he pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered how many people had ever had this sort of conversation. None, probably. Definitely no one in his admittedly limited circle of acquaintances.

“You’re going to stay right here, inside, and you will sleep on the couch. I will deal. I’m just not used to having someone stay over for the night. It’ll be fine.” He hoped. It should be fine. What was the worst that could happen? Oh, he definitely should not have thought of that. There were so many things that could happen. Anything from a mosquito swarm to a meteor hitting the building, with the way his life was going at the moment.

Maybe he should stop thinking about what could happen and focus on the there and then instead.

“How are you holding up?” Tybalt asked and forced his mind to focus on something else. Fenris was always checking in on him, it seemed.

For a moment, Fenris looked startled. Tybalt couldn’t help but wonder when anyone had last asked that of Fenris.

“I…” Fenris hesitated. “I worry. I fear. If Danarius gets to my mother or my sister… Yet, at the same time I feel… I feel hope that my decisions will not sign their death certificates after all.”

Something ached in Tybalt’s chest. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to worry like that, to carry that kind of weight with him. Somewhere, distantly, the electric kettle switched off.

“I’m sure that those Nightingale and Seeker people will find them soon enough. Then we’ll go there and everything will work out.” Tybalt hoped so at least. Maybe if he clung to that hard enough to the power of optimism, his brain would finally stop coming up with worst case scenarios that wouldn’t help anyone and only made him want to curl up in a ball.

“ **We** ’ll go there?” Fenris asked. “You mean to go with me?”

Tybalt poured the boiling water into two mugs. His hand shook a little, but Fenris didn’t mention it.

“Yeah, I mean, if you want me to. I just… I kinda figured that two would be better than one in case something happens?” Though Tybalt fully expected his friends not-so-subtly shadowing them as back-up. “Unless you don’t want me to. I’ll respect that.”

Part of Tybalt was just plain curious about Fenris’s family, who they were and where he had come from. Instead of saying that, he dropped a tea bag in each mug and held one out for Fenris. Tybalt almost startled back when Fenris was suddenly much closer.

“I want you there,” Fenris said and reached to grasp Tybalt’s arm as if he were hanging on for dear life.

Tybalt dragged Fenris closer, tucking Fenris against his chest and wrapping his arms around Fenris. He buried his face in white hair.

“We’ll find them,” he promised with a hoarse voice. “We’ll get there before Danarius can and we’ll make it so that we will never haunt you or your family again.”

“Do not make promises you cannot keep, Hawke.” Fenris’s words sounded muffled against Tybalt’s chest.

“I’ll keep this one, no matter what.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back! I'm all moved in. Sort of. Still a lot of unpacking to do but I couldn't leave this lot hanging any longer.

Patience was a virtue but one, Tybalt had always thought, with a suspiciously short shelf life. It felt as if Fenris and he lived around their phones and were constantly waiting for either Varric or Mahariel to call with the news that Fenris’s mother and sister had been found. Three days had gone by. Three days with Fenris sleeping on his couch, eating breakfast together, anxiously waiting for news, eyeing every shadow with suspicion. All the while, Tybalt kept pretending to his family that there was nothing strange going on. They’d be angry once they found out what he had been keeping from them, but at least they wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.

He hoped.

Tybalt would be lying if he said that he didn’t spend half his nights awake while endless what-ifs that swamped his mind whenever he sat still for more than a moment or two. What if Danarius knew his name? What if he had gone to find Tybalt’s mother or siblings to hold as leverage? The thought turned Tybalt’s stomach.

He would never be able to live with himself if his family got hurt because of this.

He could only imagine that this was just a fraction of the worries Fenris struggled with.

Fenris had gone quieter over the last few days, his eyes sharper, shoulders drawn up and his hands turned to near constant fists, as if he expected a fight at every corner. Tybalt had no idea how to ease Fenris’s mind. He could only hope that they’d get word soon and could act on it, bring this whole mess to an end and keep everyone alive.

It felt as if their entire lives were on hold, as if they couldn’t start anything out of fear of having to drop it at a moment’s notice.

Tybalt glanced at Fenris, who had taken up position at the window that gave the best view over the street.

“Do you have to go to work tonight?” Tybalt asked.

Fenris shook his head.

“Not going,” he said.

“But your job. I mean, won’t you get fired?”

“Probably.” Fenris turned to look at Tybalt. “But as the club is Athenril’s in all but name and she sold you out, I believe it better I not show my face there.”

He had a point there, Tybalt had to give him that much.

“I will repay you for the food and letting me sleep here,” Fenris continued.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tybalt hurried to say. “It’s not about the money. Not even close it’s just…”

How could he best explain it? He frowned, chewed his bottom lip for a second while his fingers ran up and down over a groove in the kitchen counter.

“I remember how difficult it was for me to get a job,” he finally said. “I don’t- I don’t interview well. There’s all this stuff in job interviews that matters so much to the people responsible for hiring, even if it doesn’t mean much for the job itself. Eye contact, handshakes, how you sit, if you- So getting a job was this big, amazing thing and the idea of losing it became kind of, you know…” He made a vague, fluttering motion with his hand.

He remembered how it was the first few months at the bookshop, how worried he’d been that if he showed even the slightest sign it would be shelved under ‘can’t handle the job’ and he would get fired. It had taken a while to get used to the idea that Mahariel actually wanted to work with him.

And now he couldn’t help but wonder if the only reason he’d got the job in the first place, let alone kept it, was because of his connection to Athenril. Never mind that Varric had put in a good word for him. The whole idea left a bitter taste clinging to the back of his throat whenever he thought of it.

“Right now, my first concern is to ensure the people I care for do not come to harm, not whether I will have a job once this has been concluded,” Fenris said. He looked at Tybalt with with sharp eyes, as if he was drinking the sight in just in case there wouldn’t be a next time. It made Tybalt’s breath catch in his throat, and his chest constricted for a moment. Fenris’s eyes weren’t on Tybalt’s face, but rather on his arm, where the cut Tybalt had received in the struggle was already healing.

“We’ll find your family,” Tybalt promised. “I’m sure that the people Mahariel and Varric know will find them any minute and we’ll get to them before Danarius has a chance.”

He didn’t know how often he had said it over the past few days and Tybalt feared the moment when those words would start to sound hollow. How would he keep it together if he were in Fenris’s shoes?

“They are not the only ones I worry for,” Fenris said. “Isabela was hurt. You have been hurt.”

That, Tybalt thought, should not make his heart feel as if it was doing somersaults in his chest. They’d talked about it before, but Fenris couldn’t seem to let the guilt go. To Fenris, the threat of things to come loomed large over the both of them at all times, never relenting, only growing more oppressive by the minute.

“I can fight for myself,” Tybalt said. “Don’t worry about me. Well, actually, you can start worrying about me once my family finds out.”

He gave a lopsided grin.

“I’m not giving up on a happy ending and neither should you. We’ll be fine. We have each other, allies no one expected and we’ve already won once.” Never mind that that was a small group. If Fenris wasn’t going to be optimistic about their odds, then Tybalt would have to be. They’d make it through this. He simply would not allow for another option.

He wouldn’t make his family grieve over him. They’d had enough sadness in their lives already.

Fenris frowned, looking doubtful in the face of Tybalt’s conviction.

“But first, we have to eat,” Tybalt decided. “Can you set the plates while I finish this up?”

* * *

The doorbell rang when Fenris had his arms up to his elbows in the soap dishwater. They both jumped, Tybalt more so than Fenris, who had barely twitched while Tybalt ended up making a desperate grab for the dish he’d dropped. Luckily, he succeeded and caught it before it shattered on the floor.

“I should answer that,” Tybalt said. His voice dipped into an almost inaudible whisper.

“Careful,” Fenris mouthed back.

It could be anyone. It could be Anders or one of the other people in the building, a salesperson, one of his friends. Or one of Danarius’s people, though Tybalt doubted that they would ring the doorbell. He was highly dubious about whether they would use the door in the first place.

Yarrow was already at the door by the time Tybalt got there. The dog pressed his nose against it and wagged his so hard his entire back half shook along.

Tybalt scratched Yarrow behind the ears as he peered through the spy hole. He could just about make out the top of brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Varric, he figured. The two of them seemed to balance each other out when it came to height, at least. The average of them ought to come to a regular sized person.

Tybalt stepped away from the door and backed right into Fenris.

“What the- Fenris!” he yelped. “I’m getting you bells. You and Zevran. Anti-sneak bells.”

Tybalt huffed. Couldn’t even check who was at the door without tripping over someone.

“Who’s at the door?” Fenris asked. Apparently he wasn’t even going to dignify the bell threat with a response.

“Varric, I think. What I could see of him, at least.”

“You think?” Fenris asked.

“Everything okay in there, Waffles?” Varric called at the same time.

Tybalt gestured at the door. He couldn’t help but feel a little smug at being proved right.

“I’m fine, Fenris just thought he was auditioning for a part in The Bodyguard or something,” Tybalt answered and made to open the door.

“I wanna ask,” Varric said as he entered the apartment, “but I don’t think I wanna know badly enough just yet.”

Varric looked odd, Tybalt thought. He’d seen Varric with bags under his eyes before, usually right after a deadline for a manuscript or when he’d stayed up a few nights in a row because he’d been in ‘the zone’. Tybalt still wasn’t certain what ‘the zone’ was, but he didn’t think it was good for Varric’s health. It was different now. Tybalt couldn’t quite narrow down why. Maybe it was the deeper lines etched into Varric’s face, or that he lips weren’t tilted into his default ‘I know more than you and this pleases me’ kind of smirk.

“Are you alright?” Tybalt asked.

Yarrow pressed his nose against Varric, tail softly wagging and let out his breath in a loud, doggy huff.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Varric said, but Tybalt wasn’t certain who Varric was talking to.

Both Fenris and Tybalt followed Varric to the couch, where Varric sank down and groaned.

“You know, I write about this shit. I could have lived a full, happy life without ever having to experience it,” Varric complained. For a moment, he clasped a hand over his eyes and sagged back.

Coffee was probably in order, Tybalt thought, but he found himself unwilling to head to the kitchen. He looked at his side, at Fenris, who stood rooted to the floor, frame tense with barely contained questions. He had some suds on his elbow.

“Are you going to tell us anything new?” Fenris asked. He bit out the words as if it was an effort to keep the volume down.

Tybalt’s heart gave a happy little jolt at being part of an ‘us’ for Fenris. His heart, Tybalt decided, did not understand the gravity of the situation.

“First off, you might wanna hold off on discussing important information on the phone,” Varric started. “I was gonna call first, but my contact looked like she was considering stabbing my phone. The book was bad enough as it was.”

“They’re listening in on my phone calls?!” Tybalt sputtered for a second, unable to retain any sort of coherency when faced with that notion.

Varric shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me. Seeker seemed pretty certain they are and I’ve learned not to argue with her when it comes to stuff like this.”

Varric gave a half grin that reminded Tybalt of the expression on Carver’s face after Bethany kicked him in the shins.

Tybalt decided against asking for details and instead turned to glare at his landline phone. Traitor. Oh, that was probably too harsh. The phone hadn’t asked to be used like that. The poor thing was a victim in all of this.

“As for the news.” Varric fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Fenris.

Fenris studied it for a moment, squinting at the writing, and then looked back at Varric.

“Your handwriting,” he said, “is awful. Can you read this, Hawke?”

Tybalt took the paper from Fenris and looked down to see an address scrawled down on it. The handwriting wasn’t that bad. He had seen much worse from Varric.

“You could have just said this.” Tybalt frowned.

“Yeah, but I like the suspense.” Varric grinned, wide and all white teeth. “Besides, can’t hurt in case anyone’s trying to listen in.”

He had a point there, but at least Tybalt could solve that. Well, he hoped so. He’d seen it in films enough. He just hoped that his neighbors would forgive him.

He switched the CD-player’s power button on and hit play, only to find chirping birds and a bubbling brook suddenly filtering into the room. Huh. Looked like he’d forgotten to take Merrill’s nature sounds CD out. He turned the volume up all the same. Birds chirping and waterfalls wouldn’t do any harm. At worst, his bathroom would be seeing a lot more visits. Did he have enough toilet paper? No, wait, that was not something to worry about now.

He gave Fenris a little grin.

“At least we’ll be annoying whoever’s trying to eavesdrop,” he said before he read the address out to Fenris. It wasn’t in the city, but close enough. They could get there within a day if they went by car.

Fenris was quiet for a long, long moment, breathing through clenched jaw. His scarred knuckles turning white and his nails dug into the palms of his hands.

“Fenris?” Tybalt asked as the silence dragged on.

That startled Fenris out of his silence and he shot to his feet in one fluid motion.

“I must go. Now,” he said, already moving for the door.

Tybalt reached to stop him, only barely catching Fenris by his sleeve.

“We can’t just go!”

“Why not?”

“I don’t- that is-” Tybalt couldn’t filter the nature noises out. His mind kept getting drawn to them from whatever he was trying to focus on. “Varric, help me, please?”

Varric scraped his throat. Some of his easy-going grin had found its way back onto his face.

“Hawke’s got a point. Look, I get that you want to get there as quickly as possible, but think for a moment,” Varric said.

Tybalt made a mental note to make Varric’s favourite meal in the near future.

“The sooner I get there, the less time Danarius has to get one step ahead again.” Fenris’s voice had a low growl to it, but he hadn’t shaken Tybalt’s grip from his sleeve yet.

“And what if going there leads your buddies-”

“They are not my friends.”

“-right to your family?”

Fenris hesitated. His shoulders slumped a little and he hunched in on himself. His eyes clenched shut. Tybalt could feel a tremor run through Fenris’s arms. Wind rustled leaves on the CD.

“You cannot expect me to remain now that I know where they are,” Fenris finally said. His voice sounded so tight as if the slightest nudge might break it.

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying we need a plan.”

Right then, to top off the entire distraction tango going on around Tybalt, someone loudly knocked on his door.

“Hawke?” Anders called out. “Can I borrow your grater?” Another knock, louder this time.

Tybalt pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache blooming up right behind his eyes.

“I’m just going to get that before Anders knocks his way through the door.” Tybalt stumbled over to the door, followed closely by Yarrow.

The second Tybalt opened the door, Anders came rushing in wielding a rolling pin, of all things. What the-

“Anders? Why- why are you holding a rolling pin? Do you even have a rolling pin? How did you get that?” Tybalt looked from Anders to the pin and back, trying to come up with some kind of explanation that actually made sense and didn’t include Anders robbing one of their other neighbours of said item.

So far, his mind was coming up blank.

Meanwhile, Anders looked around with the air of someone who had been imagining a completely different scene. He slowly lowered his weapon of choice.

“You’re alright? Everything’s alright? I was- You suddenly turned that sounds cd on really loudly and I got worried and- And what do you mean why do I have a rolling pin? I do have cooking utensils. I just don’t use them for their intended purposes.”

For a brief moment, Tybalt wanted to ask what kind of purposes Anders did use them for, but then decided that he didn’t want to know. Instead, he closed the door with a sigh while Yarrow circled around Anders.

“Varric found out where Fenris’s family is, we were just trying to come up with a plan on going there,” Tybalt explained.

“We can use my car. I mean, I don’t have a shift until tomorrow,” Anders offered.

“We?” Fenris asked, eyebrows arched.

“Yeah, well, I’m not letting you drive my baby. I’ve seen what you do.” Anders replied with a huff.

“Mario Kart does not equate to real life driving skills,” Fenris pointed out with a tone that heavily implied he was using more patience than he actually had, “otherwise I would never consider getting in a car with you as the driver. I like reaching my destination.”

“You can bicker later. We need a plan first. Do we have a plan? Otherwise I’m gonna suggest we get Mahariel, Zevran, Aveline and Isabela and go as a group.” Tybalt was fairly certain that including Aveline would save him from at least a portion of his mother’s wrath in the long run. Besides, he had a feeling that going with a few people who could hold their own in a fight would come in handy if Danarius’s people showed up.

Fenris and Varric exchanged a look before Fenris slowly nodded.

“That would be adequate,” Fenris said.

“Great. I’m coming too,” Anders decided. “What? You wanted to go their without the person who can patch you idiots back up again?”


	24. Chapter 24

They didn’t leave right away, as Fenris had hoped, but that was to be expected. Not everyone involved could just drop everything they were doing. Well, it turned out that Isabela could, but in all fairness Tybalt had a hard time imagining anyone telling Isabela that she couldn’t do something. Aveline, however, needed to switch some of her shifts around and promise a few favours in order to free up time. Anders had called in sick to the hospital, coughing and sneezing so dramatically that even Tybalt could tell that he was faking it, but through some small miracle the hospital had accepted it.

The biggest surprise was Merrill’s showing up.

Tybalt wasn’t certain who had told her, but he suspected Mahariel. Or Zevran. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. As far as he knew Merrill didn’t have to be there. She wasn’t a fighter and while Tybalt would love it if they could just convince Danarius to go away through flower language or something, he didn’t think that that would work.

And yet there she was, squished right next to Isabela on the backseat while Isabela explained the finer points of playing poker to her. Tybalt suspected that this was the way monsters were created.

Zevran, Mahariel and Varric had crammed themselves into Anders’s car, while Tybalt, Fenris, Merrill and Isabela had piled into Aveline’s.

It sort of felt as if they were going on a trip to an amusement park. Tybalt looked forward even less to this trip than the few amusement parks he had hazarded in as a child, and that was saying something. Hopefully, finding Fenris’s family wouldn’t involve people screaming, flashing lights, people in terrifying suits, and loud music. Hopefully, but who knew what could happen.

Fenris hadn’t said anything during the entire trip. He sat in the back, his posture stiff and gaze averted out the window. Tybalt wished that he could tell how Fenris was feeling. Fenris was probably worried, and possibly afraid if his sister was anything like Bethany. Tybalt didn’t even want to think about how Bethany would respond if he had disappeared out of her life, only to show up with news of danger and criminals.

He definitely wouldn’t have to worry about his mother’s lecture if Bethany got to him first.

“Isabela, stop teaching Merrill how to cheat at cards,” Aveline said.

“Relax a little, try and have some fun,” Isabela countered.

“I’m not here to have fun.”

“Coulda fooled me.” Isabela snorted before going right back to explaining to Merrill what the best way of hiding an extra card on her person was.

Tybalt looked in the rearview mirror, just trying to see what kind of technique Isabela was explaining, only to get elbowed in the side by Aveline.

“Ow!” he yelped and rubbed his side. He gave Aveline a reproachful glare. “What was that for?”

“You’re not using this car ride to learn how to cheat at card games,” Aveline told him.

“It could be useful,” Tybalt argued.

“Not with the way you’ll look guilty when you try to. Everyone will know what you’ve done before you even finish the move.”

Tybalt deflated, for a moment the perfect image of a sullen teenager until he straightened up again. He supposed that she was right. Still, it would have been nice if she had driven the point home without bruising his ribs. That had been rather uncalled for. Tybalt made a mental note to give Aveline the lumpy chair the next time everyone was over, even if he had to drag that infernal thing out of storage and brave all the spiderwebs that undoubtedly surrounded it by then.

Lumpy chair for Aveline Yeah. That was a good plan. He was the best at plans.

“How much longer?” Fenris asked. He didn’t look away from the windows. His arms were crossed and his brow dipped into a scowl.

Aveline glanced at the navigator.

“Another two and a half hours,” she answered.

“Wonderful!” Isabela said, far too cheerful for someone who had just been told that she would be stuck in the car for at least a few more hours. “Merrill, have you ever tried counting cards?”

“Oh! No. Is it hard?” Merrill asked.

Aveline growled low in her throat and her grip on the steering wheel tightened.

* * *

Finally, finally, the car pulled up in a narrow street. Little houses lined both sides. A few trees stood here and there as if someone had made a vague attempt to make up for the rather small front yards. Some of the houses looked like they could use a lick of paint here and there, but all in all, it wasn’t in a bad shape.

So this was where Fenris’s mother and sister lived. Tybalt wasn’t certain what he had expected, but this looked good.

He looked over his shoulder at Fenris, who had gone pale and even quieter than before.

On any other outing, Tybalt would have been first out of the car to let Yarrow out of the back. Sadly, this time Yarrow had had to stay at home. He’d already put his dog at risk once and he couldn’t bear the thought of Yarrow getting hurt now while they could very well be walking into danger again. He had instead opted to leave Yarrow in the care of one of his elderly neighbours and was pretty sure that Yarrow would be stuffed too full of doggy treats by the old lady to care too much that Tybalt had gone out without him.

If all went well, he should be able to make his apologies to Yarrow the next morning.

Anders pulled up right behind them. Right. This was as good a time as any to get moving, Tybalt supposed. Right then, Fenris opened the door and got out without saying a word. Sooner or later, he would have to start talking again, but Tybalt knew all too well how difficult words could be.

The entire group gathered on the sidewalk. Yeah, that was not obvious at all, Tybalt thought and hazarded a look around. He didn’t see anyone suspicious. Well, other than this motley group, that was. Hopefully no one would call the police on them. That would be just their luck.

“We can’t all go,” Varric said.

“Definitely not,” Aveline agreed and gave Isabela a pointed look.

Isabela answered the look with a wide grin.

“Tybalt and I will go,” Fenris decided.

“Oh no you won’t. I’m coming too. If there’s anyone unwanted waiting for you there, you’ll need immediate backup.” Aveline looked at Fenris with her chin jutted out and her shoulders squared. Tybalt had seen her look like that at people just before she tackled them to the floor. He couldn’t recommend that experience to Fenris.

There would be no arguing with her. Even Tybalt could see that.

In the end, it was decided that while Fenris, Tybalt and Merrill would actually go to the house, the rest would wait nearby. Aveline had objected, but Mahariel had pointed out that she could come across as intimidating, whereas Merrill had the tendency of ending up honorarily adopted into families. On top of that, the odds of Danarius’s people knowing about her instead of Aveline were significantly smaller. Danarius had people inside Aveline’s station, but inside a small, local flower shop? That was extremely unlikely.

Merrill’s phone was on the line to Varric’s while she had it in her pocket. The most convenient butt-dial ever as Isabela had put it, except for the part that she had used her fingers and it was completely intentional. Tybalt had tried to point that out, but he got the feeling that something had flown over his head again.

The cars and the rest of the group were still down the street when Tybalt and Fenris paused in front of the garden gate. Merrill stood close behind them. It looked to Tybalt as Fenris had suddenly forgotten how to walk. He didn’t move. He eyed the door as if he could imagine himself already ringing the doorbell, and whatever might be beyond that door.

Tybalt bumped the back of his hand into Fenris, expecting the gesture to fall flat. Instead, Fenris’s hand instantly turned and he grabbed hold of Tybalt’s with a tight grip.

“It’ll be alright,” Tybalt promised.

“I wish I shared your confidence,” Fenris replied.

Tybalt wished he shared his own confidence. Sure, he was trying to remain positive for the both of them, but at times like these it was easier said than done. Still, he clung to the attempt with all his might and just hoped that no one could tell the difference despite his widely documented inability to spin a convincing lie even if it was to save his life.

“I’m be right here with you,” Tybalt said. “You can do this.”

Tybalt couldn’t be the one to ring the doorbell. That was all on Fenris.

Fenris nodded. He let go of Tybalt’s hand, though his fingers lingered a moment longer than necessary.

Tybalt’s heart lurched in his chest as Fenris pulled away. Tybalt looked back at Merrill for reassurance. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod which he answered with the tiniest glint of a smile before they both followed Fenris to the front door.

Well. This was it then.

Tybalt’s heart pounded. His palms were sweaty and the temptation to turn on his heels and run back to the rest of the group rose steadily. He wouldn’t give in. He was here for Fenris. If he backed down, he would let Fenris down and that was the last thing he wanted. Not when Fenris had been so understanding and accepting of him.

Fenris half turned back to Tybalt.

“I do not…”

“You can, we’re here,” Tybalt countered.

“I’m sure your mother will be happy to see you,” Merrill added, eternally optimistic.

Fenris looked down at his hand, then nodded and turned around to ring the doorbell.

The door didn’t open. At least, it didn’t open as quickly as Tybalt had imagined that it would. He had, during the many hours in the car, come up with countless scenarios. Most of them had involved the door flying open and both Fenris’s mother and sister pouring out to fling themselves at Fenris and hug him tight. He knew that it wasn’t particularly realistic, but a person could hope. It at least made it easier to stick to his decision to stick to the optimism thing.

Except so far, reality had already denied the first part of his fantasies.

The door was still shut.

“Maybe they’re out for groceries?” Merrill suggested.

Ah, good. It wasn’t just him then. Merrill thought it was taking a long time too. That was oddly comforting.

“I cannot leave. Not now,” Fenris said. His eyes remained fixed on the door. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“We can stay. We might have to get Mahariel to foot Merrill’s phone bill, but we can stay. The porch looks nice and comfortable.” It even had one of those swinging benches that Tybalt couldn’t sit down on because he would immediately start to imagine all the fun, horrible ways he could fall and crack his skull in full Technicolor.

He could sit on the steps. Those seemed decently stur-

Just then, the door opened slowly and cautiously. For a second, Tybalt’s stomach gave that little lurch as if he had suddenly driven over a bump in the road.

A woman stood in the door opening. Her face went pale, eyes wide and her hand came up to cover her mouth. Tybalt caught the shine of water on her fingers.

“Leto?” she asked.

Leto? What was-

“Mom…” Fenris’s voice shook. He sounded so achingly young and vulnerable right then that the sound of it reached into Tybalt’s chest and squeezed.

Fenris was Leto? That was- okay, that was new and unexpected and Tybalt didn’t quite know what to make of it, but he also realized that this was neither the time nor the place to ask Fenris. Or Leto. How was he supposed to call Fen- Le- oh for goodness’s sake. Perhaps he should just stick to Fenris for now, in his head, and ask later. Maybe Fenris had adopted the name to hide from Danarius and his mother didn't know.

Fenris’s mother looked over Fenris’s shoulder and spotted Tybalt and Merrill.

“What… what’s going on?” she asked.

That seemed to shake Fenris back into reality. He straightened up and scraped his throat.

“Perhaps… perhaps it would be better if we continued this inside,” he said.

Fenris’s mother, whose name turned out to be Aelia, settled them in the small but cozy living-room. She was a big fan, Tybalt noted, of floral patterns on just about everything. She’d put out cups of tea for them and even a plate of cookies. Her hands kept fluttering, often coming close to Fenris before shying away from touching him.

Fenris, meanwhile, sat on the flowery couch as if it were a white hot metal bench. He kept his eyes trained on his tea even as he explained the situation to his mother.

A long silence stretched on after Fenris finally finished his explanation.

Tybalt’s gaze snapped from Fenris to Aelia and back again. Was she going to say something? Was Fenris going to? Tybalt looked to Merrill. What now? Merrill arched her eyebrows and gave a little jerk with her head. Yeah that… that wasn’t going to work. Non-verbal communication was not his thing. As far as he knew, she could be telling him to say something or asking him if he wanted to go and grab a bite to eat.

“That… that’s… I don’t even know what to make of that,” Aelia finally said. “Let me see if I got this right. You’re Tybalt and you’re dating my son?”

Tybalt nodded.

“Uhm… Yes. Yes ma’am.”

It brought a tiny ghost of a smile for a brief second to her face. “I see. And you’re Merrill. And somehow you all got involved in this mess?”

“Oh yes,” Merrill said and sipped her tea. “It’s all terribly exciting.”

That wasn’t exactly the way Tybalt would put it, but he’d take it for now.

“And you all came here to get Varania and me before _that man_ could get to us?”

Fenris nodded. The movement was barely visible. His knuckles had whitened around the teacup and it shook in his grip.

Aelia sighed and sagged back in her chair. Her eyes closed for a moment. When they opened, she just looked tired and resigned.

“Starting over the first time was hard enough as it was,” she said.

“You do not know the depths of his cruelty once he gets his hands on you,” Fenris replied.

“And you do?”

Aelia’s question had Fenris go still and he looked down and away in shame. He did, Tybalt realized.

“Leto,” Aelia’s voice softened. “I know what you did was for us, to keep us safe. I should have been the one keeping us safe. That burden should never have fallen on you.”

“It was my choice,” Fenris argued back.

Aelia shook her head. There was something so sad about her that Tybalt wanted to wrap her up in a blanket and carry her to his own mother. Leandra would know how to cheer Aelia up. On second thought, that was probably just as idealized as what he had imagined would happen once Fenris and his family came face to face again.

“You were a child. That choice should never have been yours to make.” Aelia shook her head and levered herself up from her chair. She gave them a thin smile. “We’ve started over once before. We can do it again.”

“ _No!_ ” The voice surprised Tybalt. His eyes snapped up to see a young woman standing in the doorway. She stalked into the room and stopped right next to Aelia. That, Tybalt thought, had to be Varania. She looked so much like her mother, except that she was younger and much, much angrier.

“No,” she said again. “I’m not dropping everything again because he came swooping back into our lives after years of ignoring that we exist! I’m not doing it. I have a life here. I have friends. I have a job!”

“Varania,” Aelia tried and reached for her daughter’s hand.

She jerked her hand away and gave Fenris a dark glare.

“I’m not going,” she spat the words out and turned on her heels. A few seconds later, the front door slammed shut.

Fenris pushed himself up in a bid to follow. If there was one thing Tybalt knew from all the fights he’d had with Carver as a teen, it was that Varania probably wouldn’t be happy to see Fenris right then.

“I’ll go,” Tybalt said. “You stay here with your mom and Merrill. Maybe help with packing some things? I’ll talk with her. It’ll be fine.”

He hoped. He smiled, though expression felt wobbly and fake on his face, before he got up to follow Varania.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contentwarning for violence and blood

There had been plenty of times throughout Tybalt’s life where his inability to filter input had been a nuisance at the very least and disastrous at it worst. There had been times, however, when it was actually helpful, in a weird sort of way. Tybalt couldn’t stop noticing things, from the way the fabric of his trousers felt as he walked to every little noise around him. This time, he caught a flash of red from the corner of his eyes, heading quickly away from him. Without giving it a second thought, Tybalt turned and followed. He hastened his pace to not quite a run and tried very hard not to think of what he should say once he did catch up to Varania.

In what world was him talking to upset siblings ever a good idea? Well, he’d obviously thought so a few minutes ago and now he couldn’t do anything but go through with it.

Fenris counted on him, and the sooner they were all together again, the sooner they could leave and head somewhere marginally safer.

Tybalt ducked past an elderly man with a baseball cap on and turned around the corner where he had caught sight of Varania mere moments ago. She’d already made it halfway down the road. Tybalt sped up into a jog. If he lost sight of her now, there was not telling whether he would be able to find her again. He wasn’t certain if she’d come back to talk with Fenris or, and that idea was so bad that he didn’t even dare think on it too long, what if Danarius’s people were there? What if they saw her by herself? She’d look like an easy target.

“Varania!” he called. “Please stop, let me talk to you.”

It worked. Sort of. At least she stopped and turned. That was not a good glare. That was the kind of glare that promised a fight.

Tybalt slowed down and came to a halt a few steps away from her.

“What?” Varania snapped. “He can’t even come and talk with me himself? He has to send his minions to do it for him?”

“I’m not his minion,” Tybalt objected.

She snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“He and I are dating.”

Tybalt felt a little bit of satisfaction over the way her eyes widened and how she just stared at him for a second or two at that revelation.

Varania remembered herself. Her eyes went flinty and she squared her shoulders. “So what? Doesn’t change the fact that you’re out here for him because he said so.”

“Actually, I volunteered. Fen- Le- uhm…” Oh crap. He didn’t know what Fenris’s family knew about the name thing. Tybalt hadn’t even know about the name thing. Should he call it a thing? Maybe better not, looking back it felt disrespectful. Either way, he hadn’t known and he couldn’t help but feel that maybe Fenris hadn’t wanted him to find out. He didn’t know what the name change was about and he shouldn’t guess. Fenris, Tybalt told himself, would open up about that if he felt ready.

“He’s still going by that name?” Varania asked. Her words snapped out sharp like the edge of a frozen dagger. “Danarius gave it to him, you know. Thought it was more intimidating.”

“I don’t… I don’t think that’s something for me to discuss?” He hated how that came out as a question. A strong, bold statement would have been so much better. Varric would have written the protagonist as being so much more confident than Tybalt was right then, and Tybalt couldn’t help but wish that he could switch places, if just for a little bit, with one of those heroes.

“Look, I- can we take this somewhere inside?” he plunged on before Varania got the upper hand entirely. This was far too exposed. They’d moved away from Aveline and Varric and the rest. There would be no quick backup. A van could pull up and that would be it. Byebye Tybalt and Varania. 

Varania rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. For a moment, Tybalt wanted to go back on his suggestion and offer to talk it out right there on the street before he realized that his request hadn’t been unreasonable.

“Fine,” she said. “There’s a coffee place not too far from here.”

“We could just go back,” Tybalt suggested. It was worth a shot, wasn’t it? Although if he had to go by the withering glare Varania sent his way, Tybalt guessed that maybe it wasn’t.

Why was she so angry? Fenris was only doing all this to keep her and her mother safe. Couldn’t she see that?

Oh well. Coffee place it was. Hopefully they’d have a pretty decent tea selection there. He followed Varania in silence that felt more oppressive than comfortable. He reached with his right hand to ruffle Yarrow’s fur, only to remember that Yarrow wasn’t there. Instead, his fingers quickly found the beads wrapped around his wrist and began to twist them.

The upside to this, Tybalt reasoned to himself as they paused at a crossing, was that Varania would have to walk him back. Tybalt had no idea where he was any more. His hands shook with the realization and his heart crawled up to his throat. Keep calm. He could do this. He had to do this. He had to do this without Yarrow or any other member of his support group. Just him and his beads. No problem. He could handle this. This wa- Was that the old guy with the baseball cap again? It was the same shade of blue.

Maybe it was just a coincidence. There had to be dozens blue baseball caps. Maybe he was just overreacting because he was on unfamiliar grounds. No need to freak out just yet. He’d just keep an eye out and move on to freaking out if he obtained conclusive evidence that he was being followed.

Or maybe he’d call Aveline first and get yelled at over wandering away without bringing anyone to back him up. Looking back, that had not been one of his brightest decisions. It featured somewhere in the top five Tybalt’s Worst Choices and that was saying a lot. There were a great deal of contenders for that particular list.

Using window reflections and the occasional sideways glance which he hoped was subtle — even Tybalt knew that it wasn’t but he could hope — he tried his best to keep an eye on anyone with that kind of cap.

After a few more minutes, Varania stopped walking so suddenly that Tybalt had to back up a few steps.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” she hissed at him.

Tybalt opened his mouth, but closed it before he could explain that he was autistic. That probably wasn’t what she actually wanted to know.

“I think we’re being followed,” he said. “I saw this guy and I thought he was just an old guy but I guess he’s not. I don’t think old guys can walk that fast and-”

Varania held up her hand, cutting him off with an annoyed slash of a gesture.

“You’re talking too fast. What are you saying?”

One breath in, one breath out. Calm. Even. Good. Second attempt.

“We’re being followed by Danarius’s men. Or a man, at least.”

“What?!” Varania yelped loud enough to make Tybalt wince.

“Quiet, quiet,” Tybalt urged her, though he was pretty sure that it was too late for that. Anyone in their vicinity would have heard that and they were, indeed, already getting a few odd looks.

“Quiet?! You’re telling me- You led those people here.” There was anger in her voice, but she looked as if she wanted to make herself as small as possible. Like when a four-year-old Bethany had insisted she wasn’t scared of the monsters under the bed.

“It’ll be okay,” Tybalt promised. The lie weighed heavy on his tongue and he wouldn’t even have believed it himself. “How far away is the coffeeshop?”

Varania blinked for a second. “Just down the street and around the corner. Why?”

“Can we hide there?”

“I- I think so. Why?”

“We’re going to go there as quickly as possible-” Tybalt glanced to the left and spotted the blue baseball cap drawing closer “-and stay there until my friends arrive.”

And just hope and pray their pursuer wouldn’t try anything in front of too many witnesses.

Varania gave a tight-lipped nod.

For a second, Tybalt thought they had a chance. That was, until he spotted another man walking towards them and a third coming from their right. This… this was not good. He froze. What was he supposed to do now? What was he- What would Aveline do? Or one of Varric’s heroes? Aveline would get Varania safe. Varric’s heroes would do something unbelievably stupid. Great. He had a plan of action then.

Tybalt swallowed, but his mouth felt dry.

“Slight change of plans,” he said, trying to keep an eye on the person directly blocking the way to the coffeeshop, “I’m going to do something really, really stupid and when I do it, you need to run to the shop. Don’t let anything stop you, call your mother and tell your brother that Danarius’s men are here.”

“What? Why?”

Tybalt smiled against the jagged piece of fear stuck in his throat.

“I made your brother a promise.”

Tybalt took one last, deep breath, shot off one final prayer for success despite the odds, and took off. He didn’t even try to hide what he was planning. The guy he ran for had ample time to prepare and brace himself. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that Varania was right on Tybalt’s heels and she ran past not even a split second after Tybalt barreled into the man. He briefly wondered if this was how Yarrow felt when he ran at Carver. Of course, that was with the aim to rough house and not to buy someone else time to escape.

His opponent stumbled back, but stayed on his feet. Tybalt cursed under his breath.

A fist slammed into his face pain bloomed out from his cheekbone. Tybalt bit back a yelp.

This was just like the old days. This was like running with Athenril. He’d done this before, he could do it again as long as he didn’t didn’t think about everything on the line, about all the variables that had changed. Just another street fight, nothing more, nothing less. Ignore everything he could lose. He spat the taste of metal and iron on the pavement.

He saw Varania disappear around the corner. Good. Now all he had to do was get out of this one alive and hope there was no one else waiting for Varania.

People had their phones out. Hopefully some were calling the police while others were recording. Oh god, he hoped his mom wouldn’t see this on the news.

Tybalt surged forward again, feigning a punch with his right but dodging at the last moment and brought his knee up right to the guy’s groin. No one ever said that Tybalt had to fight fair. The strangled yelp escaping from the guy was one of the most satisfying sounds that Tybalt had heard in a while. The man went down to his knees. Not wasting a second, Tybalt hauled back and punched him this time, turning even as number one hit the pavement.

That left-

Tybalt cried out, almost going down when something hit him right in the face. Blood poured from his nose and for a second, Tybalt swore that he saw stars.

Ow. So much ow. That felt broken. Ah, just like the old days in the worst of ways.

He tried to find his balance again, but before he had even blinked the dots from his vision, someone else wrenched his arms behind his back. That, he guessed, would be number three and the guy who’d so graciously broken his nose was number two. In any other situation, he would have laughed because he had a Truly Mature Sense of Humour, No Really (TM). This was not one of those situations. He slammed his head back, hoping to pass Two’s favour on to Three while ramming his foot heel first down on Three’s foot. Tybalt pulled as hard as he could, fighting for just a chance of breaking free.

_Fuck_. Just give him this. Just this once. If he could just beat this he would- he would never keep things from his family again.

Hands too hard. Smelled of oil and mold and- No. No, keep it together. Just a little longer just-

Sharp against his throat. Slicing. Cutting. Trickle of warmth and wet down his throat. Sour breath in his face. He gasped through the barbs in his throat.

“He’ll do.” Shallow voice behind him, still edged with pain. Good. “Shoulda picked a different fight, freak.”

Tybalt wanted to say something. Something clever and witty. A one liner all the heroes spat out at times like these, but he wasn’t really a hero, was he? Words were heavy and too clumsy to wrangle.

Cloth covered his mouth. It scrubbed against his nose. Painpainpain _pain_. Sweet and fake in his mouth. Don’t breathe don’t breathe don’t- His heart hammered. His lungs screamed. The knife dig in deeper. He couldn’t. Beyond everything, he had to live. He had to breathe. All went dark. Everything stopped.

* * *

Tybalt woke to hammers in his skull and cotton in his mouth. He blinked, squinting. His left eye wouldn’t open. His face hurt. His arms were lifted up with metal cutting into wrists. Stone pressed against his left cheek. Cold seeped in through his clothes from the floor.

He was awake and alive. Good.

He was handcuffed to an iron bar. Bad.

His eyes adjusted to the light and he tried to get his bearings. Voices echoed on the other side of the large room, but he couldn’t make sense of the sounds, too muddled and soft. Light filtered in through windows that were too high up for him to escape through even if he got out of his binds. Blood had dried and flaked on his skin. Nothing felt right.

A voice echoed louder from the walls. The words made faint sense in the back of Tybalt’s head. Footsteps approached. Tybalt dragged his gaze sluggishly in the direction of the noise. Two men and a woman. One of the men was slightly ahead in the center, wearing a suit that looked like it cost more than two years of Tybalt’s income. He was older, lines etched on his face and eyes as sharp and cold as the blade they’d put to Tybalt’s throat before.

Tybalt swallowed and tried to sit a little straighter, as far as the handcuffs would allow.

“Good, you’re awake,” the man said and smiled.

It took everything Tybalt had to not recoil. Danarius, he thought. This was Danarius. He looked like the pictures in the newspaper.

“I’d apologize for the way we got you here, but I think we both know what’s going to happen, don’t we? A pity, really.” Danarius shook his head, almost as if he meant those last words.

Danarius fished something out of his pocket. Tybalt’s eyes widened as he saw it. That was his phone. He didn’t know anyone else who had a cover with botanical prints on it. He still didn’t know how Carver had found it in the first place.

“I’m going to make a call and you will be silent. Unless you want to try out life without kneecaps,” Danarius said, still smiling. The man to his left took out a gun, aiming for Tybalt’s leg.

Right. Quiet. He could do that. He could save defiance until he actually felt like words would make sense again. As difficult as escaping was now, at least it wasn’t completely impossible. Yet.

Danarius tapped something on Tybalt’s phone.

“Hawke!” Fenris’s voice snapped out of the speaker. The fear in his voice all but broke Tybalt’s heart. “Wh- Danarius.”

Just like that, fear was joined by hate and Danarius smirked at the screen.

“Now now, my dear Fenris, is that any tone to take to me after everything we’ve been through?” Danarius asked.

Nausea swamped the back of Tybalt’s throat at Danarius’s oily voice.

“I just called to congratulate on finally settling your debt with me,” Danarius went on.

“I didn’t- What did you do?!”

Tybalt swallowed, tried to collect sounds and syllables and meanings to say something before he caught a glint of the gun still aimed at him.

“Now now, what ever have I done to deserve such suspicion?” Danarius tutted. “I haven’t done anything. Yet.” He twitched his face at the woman. She strode over to Tybalt, flicking out a butterfly knife as she did, and pressed it along the side of his face. Danarius flipped the phone over. Tybalt saw Fenris on the screen and, from the wash of emotions across Fenris’s face, Tybalt guessed that Fenris saw him too.

Tybalt tried to smile. It was okay. He wasn’t too badly hurt. It just looked worse than it was.

“A body fetches quite a handsome price these days if you know the right buyers,” Danarius said. “Especially when you sell in parts. His organs alone will give a nice start on repaying your debt. Such a pity of his face though. Well, knowing what he meant to you, I’ll make sure to send that to you as a keepsake.”

The knife dug in. Tybalt clenched his eyes shut in reflex.

“No!” Raw despair and little else filled Fenris’s voice.

“No?” Danarius chuckled. “You seem to be under the impression that you have anything to say in the matter.”

It was quiet for longer than felt possible. The knife slowly dragged down through his skin.

“An offer,” Fenris choked out over the phone.

That seemed to perk Danarius’s interest. The knife eased up, but kept teasing at Tybalt’s skin. Tybalt kept his eyes closed. Just breathe. Breathing was fine for now. He only had to breathe. Breathe and not sink into an anxiety attack, even though everything was starting to fall out of synch.

“Oh really now? And what, pray tell, do you think you have to offer me?” Danarius purred.

“A trade,” Fenris replied. “Let him go, and I shall return to your service again.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for violence and blood

He had to escape. He had to get out of there before the exchange could happen. He refused to be a pawn exchanged for Fenris’s life, his freedom and his happiness. Tybalt didn’t care what he had to do but he would not allow himself to be used like that. Not if he could help it. Escape and call Fenris to keep him from going through with the exchange. It wasn’t the best of plans, but given the circumstances and how he was currently skirting around the edges of an anxiety attack the likes of which he had never seen before, Tybalt though that he was doing pretty well.

He kept quiet, biding his time, looking around the room with the eye that he could open. There wasn’t much lying around. A few crates and a small pile of lumber. He was still trying to figure out what he could do with that if given the chance when Danarius and his people got up, leaving without so much as a word. What the- What were they going to do now? Tybalt stiffened, holding perfectly still for what felt like a century, even though he only counted to twenty in his head. He could faintly make out the sound of a car engine.

Were they leaving him there? Just like that?

This had to be one of the few times that Tybalt wasn’t going to complain about being underestimated.

Tybalt moved, carefully at first out of fear that this was some sort of trick, and then faster. If this wasn’t a trick, he couldn’t afford to waste even a second. He pulled on the pipe that his handcuffs were locked around. It looked old. Surely there had to be a spot where it had weakened enough for him to break. Maybe. Possibly. Luck hadn’t been with him so far, but it had a lot of making up to do for getting him in this situation.

The pipe creaked and gave way a little more. Tybalt pulled harder. The metal cuffs cut into his wrist. What was a little more blood after what had already been spilled from him that day? He twisted until he could put his feet on the wall and pushed himself away.

The pipe gave way with a loud, screeching, clanging noise and Tybalt fell backwards into a crumpled heap. He scrambled back to his feet and ran for the lumber pile. He needed a weapon. Anything would do. He grabbed and came up with a broken in half two-by-four — actually it looked more like a third but that didn’t sound as nice. It was just that. It didn’t even have the common decency to have a rusty nail in it or anything.

It was better than nothing, even if the texture was too rough under his fingertips and just looking at it made Tybalt’s skin crawl.

Pleaseplease _please_ let this work.

Footsteps. Loud. Pounding. Running. Getting closer. He had to hide. Had to get out before they caught him. It would be so bad if they got their hands on him now. They liked their knives and violence too much. They didn’t look at him as if he were a person.

Get out, his mind yelled for his body to move. Get out!

He moved, lurching into action. Fear wrapped tight around his chest. Had to keep going. Couldn’t give up. Not now, not with everything on the line.

Door! Tybalt spotted it, near the other side of the building and ran for it. People shouted behind him as he yanked the door. It didn’t budge. He threw himself into it, slamming his shoulder against it but to no avail. All it did was creak.

No. No. This couldn’t be true. This wasn’t happening. Tybalt wanted to sag to the floor, to scream. It was beyond tempting, but he fought against the impulse and instead whirled around. He looked wildly for any other possible escape, but all he saw was the woman who’d cut his face and a man whose name he didn’t know, but who looked completely unimpressed with Tybalt’s attempt.

They had weapons. He had a piece of splintering wood. They had both their hands. His were still handcuffed together.

Even Tybalt could do that kind of math.

His mouth felt dry. His fingers tightened around the two-by-four and he pressed his back against the door.

“Drop it,” the woman said. Tybalt’s eyes focused briefly on her pointy chin. A scar cut to the corner of her mouth.

Tybalt swallowed.

She pulled out her knife. The sunlight coming in through the window caught on the blade and for a moment Tybalt could feel it slicing into his face again. Nausea briefly swamped the back of his throat and he nearly dropped the two-by-four.

“Every second you keep holding that thing is something else I’ll cut off you,” Scar said. Her thin lips spread into a smile.

People reported traffic in that sort of voice, Tybalt thought.

“We only have to keep you alive,” she pointed out.

Could he win this? There were only two in here. Who else was outside? Were there others or was this all Danarius had left behind while he went on to prepare for… for trading Tybalt for Fenris.

With that thought, a desperate resolve came over Tybalt. He just had to make it past them. The door on the other side was open. Once he got there, he’d see.

Tybalt surged forward, swinging the two-by-four as if he had a bat, bringing it down on her hand. The less she could use that knife, the happier Tybalt was. He dodged left, evaded the man and ran.

Other footsteps, heavy and startlingly fast, followed him in a fraction of a second. Tybalt didn’t dare look over his shoulder. He saw a sliver of the outside. Just a few more feet. Just a-

Something collided with his back. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and dropped the piece of wood. All the air went out of him. Hard knees dug into his back and a hand grabbed him by his hair, forcing his face against the ground. Little bits of gravel and dirt dug into his forehead.

“Now, I think we can both agree that that was a shitty ass decision and it’ll cost you,” the man said, far too close to Tybalt’s ear. A shudder raced down his spine and a half-formed sound escaped Tybalt before he could control it. To harsh, too close, too hard. Too there. This felt wrong. Of course it did, but it felt wrong in the way that wrapped around his throat, that cut him loose from the world and sent everything spinning too much and too fast and out of his reach.

The man grabbed Tybalt by the back of his shirt and hauled him across the floor, all but throwing him against the wall. What little breath Tybalt had managed to collect was knocked out of him again.

“What do you want me to do for getting your hand?” the man shouted as he advanced on Tybalt slowly, menacing with every step.

“Break his fingers,” she answered. There was little satisfaction in the way pain still tinged her voice, but Tybalt would take it.

He braced, watching. His breath came quickly. Everything hurt. He curled his bound hands against him as if trying to protect them from what was to come. His heart bounced around a chest that felt suddenly hollow, as if everything else had been carved out. Time slowed to a crawl. Tybalt glanced up at his face and, for a moment, couldn’t look away from the guy’s eyebrows. It looked as if they were their own separate entities.

Closer. Closer still.

Tybalt’s eyes flickered back down to Eyebrows’s feet.

Scar started to walk back to them. Tybalt heard her footsteps, slow and steady and in no rush whatsoever. He wasn’t going anywhere, after all.

Tybalt turned his attention back to the more immediate threat. Calm. Breathe. Everything would be okay. He was definitely not imagining the way breaking his fingers would feel. Nope. Not him. Not doing it. His fingers flexed.

Not. Imagining. That.

Eyebrows took another step closer. Tybalt curled in on himself.

Calm. Calm. All he had to do was to stay as calm as he could manage.

Another step. Eyebrows reached for Tybalt.

Tybalt slammed his feet out. One hit Eyebrows’s left knee. The other aimed for the groin, but his attacker turned at the last moment. Instead, Tybalt’s heel hit Eyebrows’s thigh.

He grunted, fumbled for a second and Tybalt struck again, aiming for the guy’s ankle this time. Eyebrows fell with a cry. Tybalt turned and made to scramble away. He struggled to get back to his feet.

Fingers closed around his left ankle and jerked. Hard. He lost what little balance he had regained and hit the floor again. His hands scraped against the wall as he went down. Tybalt kicked out blindly, just trying to hit what he could, whoever he could. He twisted and turned, brought his elbows down as hard as he could manage on Eyebrow’s shoulders.

“What the hell?” Scar yelled. “I thought Jeven said that he wouldn’t fight back!”

Jeven? Wasn’t that Aveline’s captain? If Tybalt came out of this alive, he’d have to remember to tell her.

“Grab his arms,” Eyebrows grunted, clearly not in the mood to discuss their leverage fighting back.

Just as Scar grabbed the handcuffs still holding Tybalt’s hands together, Eyebrow wrapped a hand around Tybalt’s throat. Fingernails dug into the shallow cut there.

“Now you’re gonna hold very still, unless you want us to start removing fingers instead of breaking them.” Eyebrows’s breath was warm on the side of Tybalt’s face. Tybalt tried to turn away. He pulled and tugged, trying to get his arms free again and bucked, desperate to free himself. Desperate for air. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t die here. Not here. Not now. Not after all this. But he was going to, wasn’t he? There was no way he could possibly get out of this alive and even so, even while his shoulders strained enough to nearly dislocate themselves, his vision started to fade and his lungs burned, he still tried to fight.

More footsteps. More people. The very last ounce of hope fled from Tybalt. He couldn’t fight more people. He had already lost to these two, how could he-

Tybalt tried to turn his head. Eyebrows’s hands squeezed down even harder.

The footsteps didn’t belong to more of Danarius’s men, or maybe they did and he was just hallucinating, but that was Fenris. Fenris tearing into the building, followed by familiar red hair and- and Isabela? Isabela was there too? If this was a hallucination, then at least he got to imagine his friends were with him.

Fenris plowed into Eyebrows’s side with a sound of sheer fury and tore him from Tybalt. Eyebrows’s nails left deep scratches on Tybalt’s throat. Isabela launched herself at Scar and before Tybalt really knew what happened, the pressure on his arms was gone. He could move again. Gasping, dragging in desperate breaths, he pushed and scrambled backward until his back hit the wall.

He still felt the hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing. His own hands dug into the floor. His nails tore on the concrete.

He should get up. He should get up and help them. They were there fighting for him, why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he do that now that they stood a chance while he’d been fighting for his life just moments ago? Move, come on, damn it, get up and help.

He couldn’t. He tried to tell his limbs to just move already, but someone or something had cut the connection between what he wanted his body to do and what his body actually did. He couldn’t even get his fingers to relax, to stop trying to dig into the concrete floor.

He’d never felt more useless in his life. A little voice in the back of his mind reminded him that he had fought well and hard and this was just the time to let his friends deal with things. He’d done his part. He was tired and hurt and completely overwhelmed. Demanding more of himself at this point was unrealistic. The little voice of reason was small and didn’t weigh up to wanting to help and being frustrated that he couldn’t.

Instead, he had to watch as Fenris grappled with Eyebrows on the floor, rolling around in a heap of limbs, spat insults, and fists. He knew that Isabela was taking Scar down, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away from Fenris, sick with worry that Fenris could lose, could get hurt.

“Fenris! I can’t arrest him if you turn him into paste!” Aveline shouted from where she stood, making sure no one could sneak up on them.

Fenris crouched over Eyebrows with one hand fisted in Eyebrow’s collar and the other with bloodied knuckles. For a moment, it looked as if he was going to ignore her warning and hit the guy again. His fist twitched, then relaxed and he threw Eyebrows to the floor. Eyebrows’s head hit the concrete with a smack and didn’t get up. He barely even twitched as Aveline roughly hauled him up.

Fenris got up. He shook his bloody hand, stretching and curving his fingers as he did so. He looked around, first at Aveline as if to make sure she was taking Eyebrows over, before his gaze landed on Tybalt. He moved forward, the final two steps at a near run before he dropped to his knees. His hands hovered in the air for a second before falling down uselessly.

“I…” he spoke. “I am so, so sorry. I never- This should never have been you.” His voice cracked around the edges and Tybalt wanted to reach out, smooth the breaks over or just respond, but his words died before they even reached his lips.

“Looks like learning all those knots comes in handy outside the bedroom too,” Isabela said somewhere too his left.

Aveline sighed. “Isabela.”

“Oh don’t worry, I’ll teach ‘em to you if you want.”

Tybalt tried to form a word, make a sound, but syllables were too heavy and unwieldy for him to manage. His throat hurt.

“Varric, the coast is clear. Bring Anders.” Aveline again, calm and in charge. Everything would be alright. He hurt all over, but it would be fine. Weren’t they supposed to be trading Fenris over to Danarius for him now?

This time, the sound of footsteps didn’t come with a feeling of dread. Tybalt didn’t try to see the source, just kept his eyes on Fenris even as he sagged back a little against the wall. Fenris was there. Fenris would stay. He would, wouldn’t he? Or would he leave? Would he take this as proof that he should leave? Book plots and movie lines filtered in, adding to panic about too damned noble for their own good protagonists deciding that it was their fault someone got hurt and that they should leave for everyone’s safety.

He couldn’t- he didn’t- Not now. Not again. Not after all this.

Tybalt forced himself to move, to lift his hands and grasp for Fenris. He managed to catch Fenris’s hand, or maybe Fenris reached for him. It was too muddled in his head to tell.

“Merrill, is all clear? No one’s coming back? Have you heard from Mahariel?” Aveline spoke, all business. “Good, the plan’s working then.”

Someone knelt next to Tybalt and he flinched at first before he recognized Anders with gentle fingers and worried wrinkles around his eyes.

“I’m going to look you over, alright? See what your injuries are. Everything will be okay. We’ll get you out of here and you’ll be fine,” Anders murmured.

Patient voice, Tybalt thought. It had been a while since he’d last heard that particular tone. He had to look as bad as he felt, then.

“I shall see if I can find keys to undo the cuffs,” Fenris said and made to get up.

Before Tybalt could stop himself, a distressed whine tore through his throat and his hands tightened on Fenris’s. Fenris stopped, froze mid motion.

Tybalt swallowed, closed his eyes. His tongue felt like a dried out piece of leather in his mouth.

“Don’t-” he said, stumbled on the second word but tried again. “Don’t go.”

Silence. Fenris got down again, inched a little closer and reached out with one hand to carefully, gently, brush a few strands of hair out of Tybalt’s face. Something in Tybalt’s chest eased with the gesture.

“As long as you wish for me to stay,” he said, “I shall remain at your side.”


	27. Chapter 27

Tybalt slipped away after that, to a quiet corner in his mind. He was so, so very tired of fighting. Everything hurt. It was too bright and too sharp and he was done, too exhausted to keep a grasp on the outside world. He was only faintly aware of Fenris calling his name. Fenris’s voice caught and a shadow fell over them. A second later, red hair swam into view and a steady hand settled on Fenris’s shoulder. Tybalt heard quiet murmurs, picked up on the intonations that he knew as Aveline before he completely slipped away from the pain and terror.

When Tybalt woke again, he woke to darkness, and for a moment he froze. His heart thundered in his chest and his breath caught. No no no n- No. This was a bed. Even better: this was his bed. He heard Yarrow breathing from somewhere near the foot of the bed, his claws scrabbling just a little bit over the floor as he chased a ball in his sleep. Someone else breathed, a light snore of a sound and Tybalt held perfectly still. A hundred thoughts and fears raced through his head, one more illogical than the other but after everything that had happened, he didn’t think that people could blame him for a little irrationality.

His eyes adjusted and he tried to look around the room without moving too much and drawing attention to himself. He couldn’t fight again, not like that. Everything hurt too much, but if Yarrow was there and asleep, he couldn’t still be held captive by Danarius, could he?

Tybalt spotted a head with white hear, lolling back, eyes closed, body slack in what had to be the most uncomfortable chair Tybalt owned.

Fenris, he realised, and some of the panic in his chest eased away.

He tried to sit up without making a noise, but apparently even the quiet groan that escaped when he realized just how much he hurt was enough to alert Yarrow, and Yarrow’s scrambling to get up woke Fenris. Fenris’s jolt to wakefulness was one of the funnier things Tybalt had seen in the past few days. Fenris sat up straight, his head snapped up and his eyes instantly focused on the bed.

“Hawke?” he asked, shifting to the edge of his seat, but not quite over to Tybalt yet.

Tybalt tried for a smile and felt a sharp sting on his bottom lip. There was something on his nose, and for a moment his hands twitched to take it off before he remembered that it was probably there for a reason, and Anders would scold him if he as much as pointed at it.

“I’m here,” he said and dropped back into bed. Moving was too much of an effort between his aching body and the bone deep exhaustion that always settled in after he’d shut down. Talking hurt. For a brief flash of a moment, he felt hands close around his throat again.

Fenris moved, got up from the chair and sat on the edge of the bed. Yarrow dropped his head on the mattress right next to Fenris and gave a little whine. It never ceased to amaze Tybalt how sensitive Yarrow was to his state of mind.

“Are you…” Fenris trailed off. There were too many words to finish that sentence. Was he okay? Was he going to shut down again? Fenris had never seen it before and a part of Tybalt, the part that had seen plenty of people walk away, was so happy to see that it hadn’t scared Fenris away too.

Tybalt made a second attempt at sitting up. He moved slowly, cautiously, and ever so mindful of the many twinges and protests his body sent to his brain. How dare he even think of moving after everything he had put himself through?! Still, he persisted until he was upright and leaning his back against the headboard. Tybalt gently poked at his nose and the- well, what was he supposed to call it? Cast? Casts were those big cumbersome things on broken legs and arms. Between him, Carver and Bethany, he had seen plenty of those while growing up.

“I don’t know,” Tybalt said. “As long as I don’t think about it…”

As long as he didn’t think about knives and the handcuffs or how much they had wanted to hurt him, how desperately he had wanted to escape but had failed at that… Yeah. As long as he didn’t think about that, he was fine. Fine enough, at least. Therapy. He was going to need so much of it. Maybe his old therapist was still in business. He’d liked her and she’d been great after he got away from Athenril’s gang.

“Why?” Fenris asked. “Why did you do that? Why would you risk yourself like that?”

Tybalt looked down at his hands. Someone had bandaged his wrists and his beads stood out against the white wrappings, even in the faint streetlight that filtered in through the window.

“I made you a promise,” he finally said. “That we’d find your family and Danarius wouldn’t hurt them.”

Silence stretched between them until Fenris shifted closer. He squeezed Tybalt’s lower arm, hard and desperate.

“Not at the cost of you. Please, never again at the cost of you,” he said in a rough whisper. His voice shook.

“I-” Tybalt cut himself off. He couldn’t make that promise, could he? Even knowing what he knew now, he’d do it again. “I’m sorry.”

“That was not what I meant. You- you have nothing to be sorry for. I just wish- I had never wanted to see you hurt.”

“I’d hope so.” It was out before Tybalt even realised that he had thought the words. He looked at Fenris, eyes wide and more than a little horrified. A moment went by, then another before Tybalt saw Fenris’s mouth twitch and heard a snort that meant that Fenris was trying to hide the dorkiest of chuckles. Tybalt folded a hand over his mouth to try and muffle his own laugh.

It felt like he could breathe again.

He didn’t even know why they were laughing while trying desperately to keep quiet, but they were and he didn’t want it to stop.

Eventually, their muffled laughter faded and Tybalt found himself tugging Fenris closer. He needed Fenris close. Yarrow whined. He had to move out of Fenris’s way for a moment and liked none of it.

“What are you-” Fenris started, though he let himself be tugged along.

“I’m very tired and I need to sleep. That chair is evil. You’re going to sleep right here,” Tybalt informed Fenris as he nestled down and wrapped an arm around Fenris as he did so. He felt a slight rumble in Fenris’s chest. A chuckle, Tybalt guessed.

Yarrow’s paws padded across the floor as he circled the bed and then, with a huff, pulled himself onto it and cuddled down on Tybalt’s other side. The bed frame groaned under the added weight. Yarrow was not a small dog, after all. The bed held steady, thankfully. Tybalt was in no mood to deal with a collapse on top of everything. He didn’t even have the energy or will to make Yarrow get down from the bed. The added weight and warmth on both sides was comforting. It was safe and it meant that he wasn’t alone.

* * *

Something clicked, someone giggled and Tybalt could feel weights on top of him. He cracked one eye open and squinted against the light that poured in through the bedroom window. Everything was blurry for a few seconds. He blinked and his sister came into focus at the foot of his bed. Bethany grinned at him and held up her phone.

Tybalt got the sneaking suspicion that there was a new picture of him on her phone. Evil little sisters. He tried to lift his left arm to rub the sleep from his eyes, only to discover that part of the weight on top of him was Yarrow, who pinned that arm down quite effectively. His right arm, in turn, was trapped under Fenris, who was using Tybalt’s chest as a pillow. It almost made him feel like they were trying to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere. It was heartwarming, in the kind of painful way where they were pressing down on bruises that did not like to be pressed down on.

Ow. Very much ow.

Moving would solve the issue, but that would also mean waking Fenris and Yarrow up. He didn’t have the heart to do that, so he settled for blinking owlishly at his sister.

“How are you feeling?” Bethany asked barely above a whisper.

“Warm,” Tybalt answered, as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to wake Fenris. Who knew how long he’d been in that blasted chair?

Regardless of Tybalt’s intent, Fenris stirred with a faint noise. Tybalt tried to keep as still as humanly possible in the hopes that Fenris would go back to sleep. No such luck. Fenris shifted, looked up to see Tybalt, and pushed to sit up. He yawned and squinted at Bethany as if he wasn’t quite certain what to make of her or their situation.

“I… I should go,” Fenris finally said and moved to get up.

Tybalt made a grab for him.

“No, stay.”

Fenris looked at Tybalt’s fingers loosely wrapped around his wrist, then at Bethany before looking back at Tybalt.

“I was only going to-”

“Please?” Tybalt tried.

Bethany scraped her throat.

“Well, I just thought that I should let you know that mom’s made breakfast,” she said.

Tybalt blinked.

“Mother’s here?”

“Yes, and Carver too. What did you expect after- well, after everything?”

Tybalt let go of Fenris in favour of trying to tug his blanket over his head. At that moment, his being a grown man didn’t matter. His mother was going to kill him for getting involved in this sort of mess again. He had survived everything only to meet his end at the hands of motherly disapproval and disappointment. In his defense, those two were the worst weapons known to men. Perhaps they should just have gone ahead and called Danarius’s mother. Maybe then things would have ended without the abduction and a fresh, new trauma for Tybalt.

Unless she was worse than Danarius. On second thought, perhaps it was best that they hadn’t tried to find his mother, Tybalt decided under the relative safety of his blankets.

Something poked his side. For sake of ease, Tybalt assumed that it was Bethany. She had pokey fingers.

“Are you going to get out of bed?” Bethany asked.

“Never,” he answered.

Bethany sighed. Tybalt didn’t have to look to know that she’d shrugged, or that there was an evil, victorious smile on her face because of some trump card or another she was planning to play. He knew his sister. He’d had a lot of years to grow used to her plans and methods. Too bad that he hadn’t yet figured out a way how to best her.

“Well, if that’s what you want but there will be waffles. And Carver.”

That was dirty. That was a low blow, that was cheating! It was also startlingly effective. He tossed his blanket back to glare at her. She grinned back. Fenris just looked at the two of them with the faint look of dawning recognition. He’d probably had similar altercations with his own sister while growing up.

“Fine. I’m coming.” There was no way he would let Carver have his portion of waffles on top of what his younger brother had already undoubtedly scarfed down.

Bethany nodded, looking distinctly satisfied.

“Great. I’ll tell the rest!” She made a bee-line for the door out of the bedroom.

“Wait! What rest?! How many- and she’s gone.” He didn’t want to deal with everyone. He barely felt ready to leave his bedroom, let alone talk with people. Maybe he could let Carver have the waffles.

“Last I checked,” Fenris spoke, “The rest meant your mother, brother and Anders. Aveline left once she had informed your family of what had happened. Merrill left with Isabela and Varric said something about inspiration before he took his leave as well.”

That was comforting. In a way. Tybalt wasn’t certain how he felt about Varric’s sudden bout of inspiration and the likelihood of this appearing in one shape or another in a future novel of Varric’s.

Tybalt slowly levered himself out from under Yarrow. The dog opened one eye, then closed it and went back to snoring. Tybalt reached out and scratched Yarrow behind the ears for a second.

“How long have I been…” Tybalt made a vague gesture with his other hand without looking at Fenris.

“Roughly a day and a half,” Fenris answered.

Tybalt groaned and moved to bury his face in his hands, but stopped just before he could do so. His poor nose and swollen eye wouldn’t agree with that.

“You do not need to venture out. I can get breakfast for you,” Fenris offered.

It was tempting and Tybalt wanted to accept the offer. Bed was good. Bed was warm. Especially since every move he made announced yet another part of his body that hurt. He wanted to see his family, though. He wanted to show them that he was in one piece and that he’d recover from this as well. First, there was something else. A question that was starting to grow and loom in the back of his head.

“Before I go anywhere. Can you- can you tell what happened? How did you find me? I was trying to escape. I didn’t want to be the reason you ended up in his grasp again.” Tybalt would never have forgiven himself.

Fenris sat down next to him, close, almost touching but not quite.

“If I believed that my life would have ensured your safety, I would gladly have given it,” he said in slow, measure words, “but I know Danarius. He would have kept you, turned you into a leash to ensure my obedience.”

“So you weren’t going to-”

“As a last resort. Mahariel tracked the phone call when Danarius called. He probably did not believe that I had people with me who could do that.” Fenris smirked. “We set up the exchange hoping that they would set a trap there and take people away from where you were kept. Mahariel met them there and we came for you. I just… I wish we had made our way to you sooner.”

Fenris very, very gently touched the edge of the bruising on Tybalt’s face. Tybalt leaned into the touch.

“And Danarius?”

“Arrested by Mahariel’s people along with those who survived the initial confrontation.” Fenris drew a slow, steadying breath. His fingers dug into the blankets; his knuckles turned white. “Zevran still has his contract to fulfill, however.”

Tybalt knew what that meant. It was unlikely that Danarius would live to see any form of trial and, in a way, Tybalt was glad of that. A dead Danarius couldn’t come back to haunt them. A dead Danarius couldn’t use his network from within prison to get back at them for defying him. Tybalt looked at Fenris, at how his fingers still hadn’t relaxed.

“Are you alright with that?” he asked.

Fenris was quiet for a second, then another, a handful passed before he answered.

“I believe that I will be,” he said. “Once I start to realise that that period of my life is truly over.”

Perhaps, Tybalt thought, Fenris could use a meeting with a therapist too. That was neither then nor there. They had waffles to get to before Carver had scarfed them all down. Tybalt knocked Fenris’s arm with his elbow.

“Let’s go eat.”

“If you are certain.”

Tybalt smiled, leaned in and kissed Fenris, softly, on the corner of his lips.

“I am.”

It turned out that getting up and walking to the kitchen was more easily said than done. While Tybalt had still felt tired while sitting in bed, actually walking made everything feel at least twice as bad. He half stumbled along, with Fenris at his side and ready to catch him should he lose his balance. Thankfully, he made it to the kitchen without that indignity heaped upon the disaster he called his life.

The quiet chattering in the kitchen stopped mid-sentence. Everyone looked up and at him. Carver had a waffle half sticking out of his mouth. Tybalt shrank back, tempted to retreat back to the safety of his bedroom when suddenly faced with everyone’s attention. He pushed through it.

Tybalt’s mother put a plate down and strode over. She stopped right in front of Tybalt and looked up at him. For a moment, he worried that she would start berating him, but instead she flung her arms around him and hugged him tighter, tighter than Tybalt liked but he couldn’t bring himself to pull out of her embrace. Not quite yet.

“You scared me,” Leandra said. “I thought- I thought we’d never see you again.”

Tears brimmed her eyes. There were new wrinkles on her forehead and around her mouth. Her fingers brushed over the parts of his face that weren’t bruised, as if she was reassuring herself that her eldest would heal.

“I’m sorry. I-” Tybalt tried to say more but his voice caught in his throat on the heavy lump that had suddenly formed there.

His mother’s smile trembled, but didn’t fade.

“You’re safe. You’re alive. Right now, that’s all I could ever ask for. Today, we’ll celebrate that and once you’re all healed, we’ll talk about keeping things like this from your family.”

Tybalt gulped at that prospect, but it was better than what he had expected. He leaned into Fenris while Yarrow bumped his head into Tybalt’s hand and they made their way to the table where they were greeted with a veritable breakfast banquet.


	28. Epilogue

There was a set order to the art of waking up. It started with Fenris trying to disentangle himself from the sleeping wanna-be-octopus that was Tybalt, soon followed by a pitiful groan before desperately grasping hands rose from the mess of blankets and blindly grabbed for Fenris in a bid to pull him back into bed. Long fingers enclosed around Fenris’s wrist and tried to tug him back where the world was warm and soft and, most of all, not awake.

Fenris yielded without any resistance, dropping back into bed and on top of Tybalt. One of his hands came to rest flat on Tybalt’s chest, the other one the bed and he pushed himself up just a little. He smiled and lowered himself, brushing his lips over the scar that ran along Tybalt’s face.

Tybalt shifted, lifting up when Fenris pulled away. His hand came up to cradle the back of Fenris’s neck. His fingers combed through strands of white hair while he kissed Fenris.

“Love you,” he whispered.

Both of Fenris’s hands were on Tybalt’s chest now and Fenris pushed up just an inch or two. He smiled down, radiant and bright and unguarded in a way that Tybalt only saw when they were alone. It felt like a gift every time.

“And I love you,” Fenris answered. That had taken a while. A while before Tybalt dared to say it, and it had only been three months or so since Tybalt had first heard those words come from Fenris in return.

Tybalt tugged Fenris down, carefully maneuvering until he could curl up with Fenris in his arms, nice and cozy, tucked away from the world outside of the bedroom while dropping soft, light kisses on the back of Fenris’s neck. All was quiet and good and if it were up to Tybalt, it should remain that way until the end of eternity.

“As much as I enjoy this, if either of us wishes to arrive at work on time, we should get out of bed,” Fenris said, all too soon for Tybalt’s tastes.

See, those words? Those words Tybalt had heard almost daily after Fenris had moved in. No, wait, even before that. There had been a period between Fenris’s getting a new job and them officially living together when Fenris had spent nearly every night over anyway.

“Noooo,” Tybalt whined. “Bed good. Outside world bad.”

“Work enables us to have a good bed,” Fenris pointed out.

“Your logic is cruel and I’ll have no part of it.”

The mattress dipped under Yarrow’s weight as the dog clambered onto the bed. Tybalt turned his head and eyed the dog. They were ganging up on him! That was cheating! That was uncalled for! That was- that was a dog tongue slobbering over the left side of his face. Lovely. Tybalt pulled a face and tried to get away from Yarrow. He loved his dog, but dog breath was not one of his favourite scents in the morning.

Fenris’s laughter filled the room. His mouth curved up, wrinkles appeared around his eyes.

“It’s not fair when you two gang up on me like that,” Tybalt complained with no real heat behind his words.

Fenris slipped from Tybalt’s arms, giving him one more kiss, soft and lingering, before he got out of bed once more.

“I shall make coffee,” he promised and turned to leave.

“That’s bribery!” Tybalt called after him.

“As long as it works!”

He was right, Tybalt had to give him that much. He levered himself up with a groan and rubbed his hands over his face. Right. Awake. He could do that. He could do the thing and get dressed. Maybe he could even find a matching pair of socks. They were around there somewhere.

Yarrow hopped off of the bed and followed Fenris to where he was sure to receive his breakfast.

Abandoned by both his boyfriend and his dog, Tybalt was left to grope around for his socks before he decided that orange and brown were sort of close enough, even if the orange one came with a leaf pattern on it. It wasn’t like anyone was actually going to see his sock anyway. With his socks found, Tybalt finally lurched from the bed. Right. Time shave. And stuff. And possibly to wake up some more.

He still didn’t see why mornings had to be a thing.

The scent of freshly brewed coffee already filled the kitchen and drifted out into the living room by the time Tybalt managed to get himself shaved and dressed — there had been a brief disagreement between him, his shirt, and which hole was actually meant for his head but the less said about that the better.

Tybalt passed a mirror on his way to the kitchen. His eyes no longer caught on the scar on his throat, or the one down the side of his face. His gaze no longer lingered more than a second on the slight bend in his nose that hadn’t been there two and a half years ago.

Instead, Tybalt’s eyes immediately went to Fenris upon entering the kitchen. His attention focused, for a moment, on the way Fenris’s long fingers were wrapped around a mug that was probably filled to the brim with coffee, and the way he’d pulled his hair back in a sloppy ponytail. Tybalt wasn’t certain if the long hair was on purpose or because getting it cut would involve effort that he couldn’t put into it between his job and evening classes, or maybe because neither of them was comfortable with sharp things coming near them just yet. Tybalt didn’t ask either. What if Fenris took that as a prompt to get it all chopped off? Tybalt liked playing with his hair!

“There is coffee for you and toast should be ready in a moment,” Fenris said and eyed the toaster.

They had been burned before. The toaster was a temperamental thing and they should probably have replaced it ten times over by now, but a tiny little part of Tybalt worried that he’d hurt the toaster’s feelings and it would place a curse on the next toaster. He had probably watched too many television shows with living objects while growing up.

“Thank you,” Tybalt said and stifled a yawn. He shuffled to stand next to Fenris and leaned sleepily against him. “We can still go back to bed.”

Fenris shook his head. A strand of white hair fell in Tybalt’s face, right against his nose, and Tybalt crossed his eyes to try and see it.

“Work,” Fenris told him.

“I reject this notion of work and substitute it with warm, fluffy blankets and cuddles.”

Fenris laughed.

“Those will be here when we come home tonight,” he pointed out.

Tybalt sighed. Defeated by logic once more. He supposed that Fenris had a point. He might not like it, but who was he? He shuffled on to his seat and watched with bleary eyes as Fenris put a mug of steaming, hot coffee down in front of him.

“This is all your fault, you know. You kept me up last night,” Tybalt accused him.

Fenris arched an eyebrow at him that was far too expressive for that hour of the morning.

“Yes, and as I recall, you had absolutely no objections about that at the time,” Fenris answered. Tybalt could hear the smuggest of smug smiles in Fenris’s voice, even though his mouth was hidden by a mug that declared him to be the sexiest man alive.

Tybalt blamed Isabela for that mug’s presence. It wasn’t that he didn’t agree. He very much agreed, but Tybalt was completely certain that he never bought that mug and he didn’t think that Fenris had bought it either. He thought. He wouldn’t, would he? Tybalt eyed Fenris. He did have a sneaky sense of humour.

Just before Tybalt could voice his suspicions, the toaster pinged and spat out two pieces of what might once, in a distant past, have been bread. What appeared, however, was a slice of charcoal vaguely shaped like bread.

Fenris heaved a deep sigh and gave the toaster a look of complete and utter resignation.

“You had one job,” he told the toaster and picked the failed slices out of it. He scraped over the crispy exterior to reveal only more burned bread.

“To be fair,” Tybalt said, “we should have smelled that coming.”

Fenris looked up, blinked once, twice.

“Was that a pun?” he asked.

Tybalt attempted a look of complete innocence. Naturally, that meant that his mouth twitched and fought the urge to grin. He lost the battle. Neither of them had expected any differently.

Fenris smiled and shook his head.

“We are going to replace Satan’s toaster. I would enjoy knowing for certain that I will have toast for breakfast rather than depend on a technological coin toss.”

Tybalt resisted the urge to point out that Fenris had said similar things for the past four months or so and yet they still had, as Fenris called it, Satan’s toaster. At the rate they were going, Tybalt suspected that he might end up asking for a new toaster for Christmas or maybe his birthday. He sipped his coffee and watched while Fenris picked through the fruit basket, coming up with an apple and a banana before circling the table to get to Tybalt. Fenris put the apple down in front of him and dropped a quick kiss on Tybalt’s cheek.

“I shall attempt to be home early for game night,” he promised.

“Good luck at work and school.” Tybalt turned to watch Fenris go. The door closed, leaving him and Yarrow in the apartment. Well, then. With Fenris gone, Tybalt supposed that he should start making earnest moves towards getting himself to work too.

* * *

By the time Fenris made it home that night, everyone else had long since settled in. They had just finished a game that Tybalt still didn’t understand the rules of. Exactly nobody was surprised when he lost within four rounds. He didn’t mind. Game rules were always kind of tricky and not as logical as he would like for them to be.

Isabela and Merrill had claimed the couch with Isabela stretched out across it and Merill comfortable like a kitten on top of her. Tybalt still wasn’t entirely certain when Merrill and Isabela had become involved. He guessed that it had happened somewhere between poker lessons and Isabela opening her tattoo shop. They were happy together and even if Isabela still rejoiced in making Aveline growl and grumble, Tybalt was happy to count her among his friends now as well. Besides, Aveline’s annoyance had sort of become part of the fun.

Anders had made himself comfortable in the bean bag chair that he had dragged over to Tybalt’s place about a year and a half ago and had never made its way back to Ander’s place. By the way he was hunched over his phone and his thumbs flashed across the screen, Tybalt felt comfortable in guessing that Anders was texting with Karl. Last Tybalt had heard, Anders had said that Karl wanted to look into getting a place in the city. Tybalt hoped that that place would turn out to be Anders’s. After a thorough kitchen cleaning. Karl could cook couldn’t he?

Meanwhile, Aveline and Varric had embroiled themselves in a discussion about the accuracy, or perhaps more accurately put inaccuracies of police procedure in Varric’s latest novel.

“There is such a thing as responsibility to your readers!” Aveline argued.

“And then there’s a thing called boring them to tears,” Varric replied and picked through the bowl of crisps on the table for his favourites.

Aveline huffed.

“Are you saying police work is boring?!”

“I’m not- look, people don’t want to read about however long it takes for the DNA analysis to complete. They want action and excitement, not paperwork,” Varric replied and earned himself the kind of glare that always made Tybalt re-evaluate his life choices.

Fenris paused right after he stepped inside and looked around the room. His shoulders didn’t tense and, Tybalt noted, his hands no longer turned into fists.

“My apologies. Class ran later than expected,” Fenris said and dropped his bag before taking off his coat.

Yarrow got up from under the small pile of cats that had come with Anders. Two of them lost to gravity and rolled off, while Ser Pounce-A-Lot managed to stay on top of the massive dog, even as Yarrow bounced over to Fenris and twisted and turned around his Favourite Person of the Moment. Fenris dipped a hand in his pocket and tried to sneakily fish out a doggy treat. Yarrow instantly shoved his muzzle against Fenris’s hand and scarfed the treat down, leaving a liberal coating of doggy drool on Fenris’s hand as he did so.

Fenris quickly wiped his hand on his trousers and looked around to check and make sure that no one had seen him. They all had. Both Isabela and Anders grinned at him. He was so very, very busted. Fenris grunted and, somewhat haphazardly as Yarrow kept circling around him, made his way to Tybalt.

“Good day?” Fenris asked, hands going to Tybalt’s waist, and he rose up to his toes for a kiss.

Tybalt felt Fenris’s smile against his lips.

“Good day,” Tybalt answered. “Yours?”

“It went well.”

Another kiss and Tybalt’s arms came up around Fenris.

Only for them to be rudely interrupted by Anders who apparently decided that death by coughing fit was the way to go. For a second, Tybalt was fully prepared to write a eulogy. This was not the time. He was kissing his boyfriend and if Anders wanted to choke on his own tongue he could do it quietly, thank you very much. Okay, so maybe he considered it for more than a second. Two seconds.

Fenris was the first to turn and look at Anders.

“What?”

Anders held up a Wii controller.

“Vengeance,” he said.

And that, Tybalt thought, was the end of smooches for that evening. He reluctantly let go of Fenris.

“I’ll go get the scoreboard,” he said and trudged off to the cupboard where they kept a little whiteboard. The whiteboard was divided in two with a neat line down the middle. One half had Fenris’s name at the top, the other had Anders’s. Little tally marks littered both sides. The Mario Kart rivalry had not abated over time. The fact that they were pretty evenly matched and neither of them had any qualms about playing dirty had only served to keep it alive.

Well, at least it made for some solid entertainment for the rest of them. Isabela and Merrill sat up with Merrill squirming around to get a better view of the television while Varric and Aveline stopped their argument over literary accuracy and liberty. Tybalt stole Anders’s spot in the beanbag the moment Anders abandoned it for a position that gave him a better view of the television.

“Everybody ready?” Tybalt asked while Yarrow ambled by to drop down on his doggy bed amids cats. “Remember the rules: no throwing the controllers at each other, no kicking and _no_ air-horns.”

Tybalt still mourned the day when he had actually had to create the ‘no air-horns’ rule. Just thinking about The Incident made his ear ring all over again.

He settled in as Anders and Fenris bickered over which cup would be the first in their ongoing battle to determine just who was better at the game. Merrill giggled, comfortably tucked into Isabela’s side. Isabela held up some money at Varric, who nodded and dug his own wallet up. Aveline rolled her eyes and reached to grab a slice of pizza.

It took three Cups — Anders won the Flower Cup, Fenris the Star and Anders took the Special by the breadth of a hair — before they declared the night over and ready for clean-up. By the time Tybalt tumbled into bed, he barely had the energy to sprawl out. Everything was tired and heavy, but in a way that didn’t make his body feel tense with panic.

Fenris was a comforting warmth by his side and he heard Yarrow snoring in the living room.

He closed his eyes and smiled to himself.

“Fenris?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Are you happy?”

Fenris shifted, turned until he was on his side and facing Tybalt. Tybalt mirrored his move.

“I am happier than I have dared to hope in many years,” Fenris said.

Something in Tybalt’s chest fluttered, happy and light and warm like the sun in August.

“Are _you_ happy?” Fenris asked.

Tybalt didn’t even have to think about that.

“I am,” he said, wrapping his index finger in a strand of Fenris’s hair. “I am so very happy.”


End file.
